Pysilfont - a collection of utilities for font development

Pysilfont is a collection of tools to support font development, with an emphasis on UFO-based workflows. With some limitations, all UFO scripts in Pysilfont should work with UFO2 or UFO3 source files - and can convert from one format to the other.

In addition, all scripts will output UFOs in a normalized form, designed to work with source control systems.

Please read the main documentation in the docs folder for more details. Within there is a list of scripts.

Installation

Pysilfont requires Python 3.6+ and pip3. Some scripts also need other libraries.

Updating your python toolchain to be current

sudo apt install python3-pip python3-setuptools
python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel build

Simple install

To just install the main scripts (only in the user's folder not system-wide) without cloning the GitHub repository run:

python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/silnrsi/pysilfont

This will allow you to run the scripts listed in scripts.md, but won’t give access to the example scripts or give you the code locally to look at.

Full install

First clone this repository or download the files from this https://github.com/silnrsi/pysilfont. To better isolate changes from your system Python we will use a virtual environment. Then navigate to the newly created pysilfont directory and run:

sudo apt install python3-pip python3-venv python3-wheel python3-setuptools

Then create a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv venv

Get inside the virtual environment, you have to do this every time you want to use the pysilfont tools again:

source venv/bin/activate

Then install update the toolchain and install:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel build
python3 -m pip install .

You can deactivate your virtual environment (venv) by typing:

deactivate

or by closing that Terminal.

Alternatively to install in editable mode:

python3 -m pip install -e .

By default the dependencies pulled in are using releases.

For developers:

Install from git main/master to track the freshest versions of the dependencies:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade -e .[git]

To have more than one project in editable mode you should install each one separately and only install pysilfont at the last step, for example:

python3 -m pip install -e git+https://github.com/fonttools/fontbakery.git@main#egg=fontbakery
python3 -m pip install -e git+https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools@main#egg=fonttools
python3 -m pip install -e git+https://github.com/silnrsi/pysilfont.git@master#egg=silfont

Uninstalling pysilfont

pip3 can be used to uninstall silfont:

locally for your user:

pip3 uninstall silfont

or to remove a venv (virtual environment):

deactivate (if you are inside the venv) 
rm -rf venv

or if you have it installed system-wide (only recommended inside a separate VM or container)

sudo pip3 uninstall silfont

If you need palaso, you will need to install it separately. Follow the instructions on https://github.com/silnrsi/palaso-python

If you need fontbakery, you will need to install it separately. Follow the instructions on https://font-bakery.readthedocs.io

Contributing to the project

Pysilfont is developed and maintained by SIL International’s Writing Systems Technology team , though contributions from anyone are welcome. Pysilfont is copyright (c) 2014-2023 SIL International and licensed under the MIT license. The project is hosted at https://github.com/silnrsi/pysilfont.