# The File Menu

- New
- Open
- Recent
- Close
- Open Outline
- Open Bitmap
- Open Metrics
- Save
- Save As...
- Save All
- Generate Fonts...
- Generate Mac Family...
- Revert
- Revert Glyph
- Export...
- Import...
- Merge Kern Info...
- Print...
- Display...
- Execute Script...
- Script Menu
- Preferences...
- Quit

New
  Creates a new font with (by default) ISO 8859-1 (Latin1) encoding. The default encoding may be changed in the preference dlg.
Open
  Brings up a file chooser and allows you to open a font in any of the formats FontForge understands.

  If you open a truetype font containing bitmaps then you will be asked if you want to load some of the bitmaps as well as the outlines.

  By default this dialog will display all files with extensions of pfa, pfb, pt3, sfd, ttf, otf, otb, cef, cff, gsf, ttc, svg, ik, mf and bdf (possibly others as FontForge comes to support more formats). If you would also like it to display .ps files then enter *.{pfa,pfb,ttf,otf,bdf,sfd,ps} and press the Filter button. If you only want it to display sfd files enter *.sfd and press Filter.
  You may select multiple files (by holding down the shift or control keys when clicking on them), and all selected files will be opened.
  FontForge can open macbinary resource files containing postscript and truetype fonts (it does not open bitmap fonts currently)
  FontForge does not open Acorn RISC/OS files, but you can use acorn2sfd to convert them into an sfd file which FontForge can then open.
  If you have mf and autotrace installed on your machine FontForge will process metafont's mf files for you. But you might want to use pktrace, mftrace or some other standalone program to do the job.

  When importing a type3 font FontForge will ask you a few questions. It shouldn't have to ask these questions, but this is an imperfect world and FontForge an imperfect program. In some rare cases FontForge will crash if it tries to do a remove overlap. The remove overlap functionality is important for interpreting stroked paths so you really should have it on. But if a crash happens then, turn it off (and the crash should not repeat, but some functionality will be lost).

Recent
  A submenu showing recently used sfd files.
Close
  Closes the current window.

  If this is a font view and the font has been changed, then it will ask whether you want to save the font. It will also close any outline character, bitmap character or metrics views associated with the font.

Open Outline
  In the font view this will open outline views on all selected characters (if there are more than 15 or so it will ask whether you really meant to do that).

  In the bitmap view it will open an outline view on the current character.

  In the metrics view it will open an outline view on whatever character is active.

  This menu item is always grey in an outline view.

  Note: It is possible to have more than one window displaying the same character. Any editing that occurs in one should be reflected in all.

Open Bitmap
  In the font view this will open bitmap views on all selected characters (if there are more than 15 or so it will ask whether you really meant to do that). If the font view is displaying a bitmap then it will open a bitmap view showing that pixelsize, otherwise it will pick a pixelsize.

  In the outline view it will open a bitmap view on the current character. It will pick a pointsize.

  In the metrics view it will open an outline view on whatever character is active, as with the font view, if it is displaying a bitmap it will use its pixelsize, otherwise it will pick a pixelsize.

  This menu item is always grey in an bitmap view.

  Note: It is possible to have more than one window displaying the same character. Any editing that occurs in one should be reflected in all.

Open Metrics
  In the font view it will open a metrics view displaying all selected characters (the order in which you selected those characters is important). The new metrics view will display whatever the font view displays (outline or bitmap).

  In the outline view it will open a metrics view displaying the current character. The display will be an outline.

  In the bitmap view it will open a metrics view displaying the current character. The display will be a bitmap in the current size.

  This menu item is always grey in the metrics view.

  It is possible to have more than one metrics view open at a time.

Save
  Saves the current file. If it is associated with a spline font database it will be saved there and a backup file will be created. If it is a new font, or if the font has been read from a postscript font file, then a Save As dialog will pop up.

  If you are editing a font "Ambrosia.sfd" then the backup file will be called "Ambrosia~.sfd".

Save As...
  Allows you to give a new name to the current spline font database. Pops up a file picker.
Save All
  Saves all changed fonts. If any have not been named, it will pop up a Save As file picker for that font.
Generate Fonts...
  This generates font files, both outline and bitmap. You may choose not to generate either, you may generate an afm file or a pfm file, you may select the type of postscript output, you may select which pixelsizes of bitmap to generate. (See that page for more info)
Generate Mac Family...
  This is only available if there are multiple fonts open in the same family, and if the current font is the "Plain" style of that family. It generates a mac FOND structure containing references to all family members, NFNT, sfnt, and POST resources for all selected faces. It brings up a dlg very similar to the Generate fonts dialog, but one that includes a list of all potential faces for family members.
Revert
  Rereads the font from the file on the disk. All changes are lost.
Revert Glyph
  Only available in the font and outline views. Rereads the font from the sfd file on the disk searching for a character in that file with the same name as the current character. All changes to this character will be lost (but if the character has references then any changes made to the characters being refered to will still be visible), this command may be undone.

  So if you have changed the name of the character this command will fail.
  If the font did not come from an sfd file this command will fail.
  If the font has been reencoded and the character has references this command may fail.
  If you have made a global change to the font (like scaling it to a new em-size) then the results may not be appropriate.

Export...
  In the Outline view this allows you to export the splines that make up the character into an encapsulated postscript (.eps), pdf, svg or xfig format (.fig -- the conversion to fig format is not the best) file. You may also have the character rasterized and output in either .xbm or .bmp (or png if you have that library) formats (FontForge will prompt you for a pixelsize. bmp also allows you to generate an anti-aliased image, and you will be prompted for bits per pixel. 1 bit per pixel is a bitmap).

  In the Bitmap view this allows you to export the current character as either a .xbm or a .bmp (always as a bitmap) file.

  This menu item is not available in the Font or Metrics Views.

Import...
  In the Font View this allows you to import one or several bitmap fonts (from a .bdf file or a ttf/otf/ttc file, TeX pk (gf) file, an X11 .pcf file or a mac dfont) and merge it into the list of bitmap sizes stored in the database. You may also load one bitmap font into the backgrounds of the outline characters (So "A" from the bitmap font goes into the background of the "A" outline character), this is to make tracing characters easier. Be careful, you need to load a big bitmap for autotrace to be useful. NOTE: FontForge is unable to read an encoding from pk files, you will may need to set it with "Force Encoding" after you've loaded the pk file.
  You may also load images into the character backgrounds. There are two ways to do this, you may either select several image files and they will be loaded consecutively into selected characters, or you may select an image template and all images whose filename match that template will be loaded into the backgrounds of the appropriate characters. Image templates look like "uni*.png" or "enc*.gif" or "cid*.tiff". You select the template by selecting a filename which matches that template-- So if you select "uni1100.gif" then all image files which start with "uni" and end with ".gif" and contain a valid unicode number will be loaded and placed in the appropriate place. Files named "enc*" or "cid*" are handled similarly except that they specify the current encoding (and the number must be in decimal rather than hex).

  If you are editing a multi-layered font (and have a version of FontForge configured for it) then you can also import an image into one of the foreground layers.

  FontForge does best when given bitmap images. It will grey out the foreground and make the background transparent. It will also compress them when it stores them in the sfd file. It will handle most other image formats but does not try to optimize them in anyway. Please use bitmaps here.

  You may load an encapsulated postscript file (or rather the sub-set of postscript that FontForge understands) into the foreground of characters. As with images above this may import either depending on the selection or a template.
  If you have libxml2 on your system then FontForge will also be able to import svg files. As with postscript, only a subset of svg is understood).

  In the Outline View this allows you to import an image into the background (see the above remark about bitmaps, or import eps or fig files into the foreground (the xfig conversion is really bad, the eps conversion is very limited).

  In the Bitmap View this allows you to import a bitmap image into the character.

  This menu item is not available in the Metrics View
  In the font view you may select multiple files (by holding down the shift or control keys when clicking on them), and all selected bitmap fonts will be imported into the sfd.

Merge Kern Info...
  Only available in the font view window. This command will allow you to search for an afm, tfm or mac resource file containing kerning pairs for the specified font. In many cases it will not be needed because when FontForge opens a .pfa or .pfb font it will automagically search for an appropriate .afm file in the same place. But sometimes afm files are stored in other directories. And sometimes you want to import information from TeX or from mac files.
  NOTE: FontForge is unable to read an encoding from tfm files or from mac resource files, it is your responsibility to ensure that the encoding of your font matches that of the tfm file BEFORE merging kerning information. This is unfortunate, sorry.

  Note: When loading a postscript font from a mac resource file, the associated kerning data will be found in the FOND stored with a bitmap font for this face. FontForge can't guess the name of this file when loading the font. You must figure it out yourself.

Print...
  Not available in the bitmap view. Allows you to print out all the characters in the font, a text sample of the font, or specific characters at a very large scale.
  See the section on printing for more information.
Display...
  Not available in the bitmap view. Similar to print, except it displays what you will see on the screen. You must have freetype on your system for it to be of any use. See the section on display for more information.
Execute Script...
  Only in the font view. Brings up a dlg and allows you to enter a script, which could be just calling a prewritten script file. There is a [Call] button in the dlg to help you locate any such files. The default extension is "*.pe" (postscript edit) but you can change that with the [Filter] button if you use something else.
Script Menu
  Only in the font view. You may define up to 10 scripts that you want to execute frequently and place them in this menu. The scripts may also be invoked by short cut with the first one being invoked by Control-Meta(Alt)-1, the second Control-Meta-2, and the tenth by Control-Meta-0. The scripts are set in the preferences dialog
Preferences...
  This pops up a dialog allowing you to configure various esoteric bits of fontforge.

  A number of things that might be controlled from a preference window are controlled by X Resources.

Quit
  Exits the program, prompting you whether to save any changed fonts.

## Other menus

- File
- Edit
- Point
- Element
- Hints
- View
- Metrics
- CID
- MM
- Window
- Help
- Hot Keys

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