{"slug": "fontforge", "name": "FontForge", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 10, "warners": 1, "score": 4.587, "rising": -0.31, "first": "2026-01-18", "latest": "2026-10-20", "why": "You can edit a font and remove the ligatures you dislike using fontforge", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 4, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "You can edit a font and remove the ligatures you dislike using fontforge", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/fontforge/fontforge", "official_url": "https://fontforge.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["FontForge"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802594928, "item_id": 50162183, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50162183", "by": "sophrosyne42", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You can edit a font and remove the ligatures you dislike using fontforge", "excerpt": "You can edit a font and remove the ligatures you dislike using fontforge [1]. [1] https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge", "context": "", "use_case": "Editing font ligatures", "switched_from": "", "story": "Nordwand Mono \u2013 A monospace font for coders and adventurers"}, {"id": 783471152, "item_id": 48966947, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966947", "by": "yorwba", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you want a tutorial, http://designwithfontforge.com might be up your alley.", "excerpt": "If you want a tutorial, http://designwithfontforge.com might be up your alley.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making Software: How to make a font"}, {"id": 772601760, "item_id": 48287610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48287610", "by": "IgorPartola", "date": "2026-05-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Font Forge is fantastic and very easy to use", "excerpt": "I worked on an embedded project a few years ago using a tiny 128x64 display and wanted to use a pixel font but none of the ones I found made me particularly happy so I made my own. Turns out it is very easy to do. Font Forge is fantastic and very easy to use and once you get going by nailing down a few letters at the size you want you can quickly make something that is cohesive, pleasant, and easy to read. I highly r", "context": "", "use_case": "making pixel fonts", "switched_from": "", "story": "A few interesting modern pixel fonts"}, {"id": 753086480, "item_id": 47067905, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067905", "by": "ssttoo", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "So now I\u2019m spending quality time with FOSS called FontForge.", "excerpt": "Excellent! For a music project of mine I found MusGlyph [1] which is also all about ligatures, like typing ssss for 4 beamed sixteenth notes. There are some ligatures I need that are not in the font, I contacted the author and he encouraged me to add them myself. So now I\u2019m spending quality time with FOSS called FontForge. Also subsetting a ligature-heavy font for the web turns out an interesting challenge. Wrote up ", "context": "", "use_case": "adding ligatures to font", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making a font with ligatures to display thirteenth-century monk numerals"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 786354704, "item_id": 49147169, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147169", "by": "sterlind", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "you can easily prove me wrong by finding a single professional font designer who uses FontForge as their daily driver.", "excerpt": "again, you can easily prove me wrong by finding a single professional font designer who uses FontForge as their daily driver.", "context": "", "use_case": "font design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Glyphs 4 \u2013 the leading Mac font editor"}]}], "who": [{"by": "sterlind", "context": "hobbyist without a Mac", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49137581", "date": "2026-08-01"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["font design", "font editing", "editing font ligatures", "removing font ligatures", "making pixel fonts", "font creation"], "compared": [{"slug": "glyphs", "name": "Glyphs", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49085065", "title": "Glyphs 4 \u2013 the leading Mac font editor", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47306655", "title": "Fontcrafter: Turn Your Handwriting into a Real Font", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50141581", "title": "Nordwand Mono \u2013 A monospace font for coders and adventurers", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50084240", "title": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48904269", "title": "Making Software: How to make a font", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48271448", "title": "A few interesting modern pixel fonts", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"compare": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802594928, "item_id": 50162183, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50162183", "by": "sophrosyne42", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You can edit a font and remove the ligatures you dislike using fontforge", "excerpt": "You can edit a font and remove the ligatures you dislike using fontforge [1]. [1] https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge", "context": "", "use_case": "Editing font ligatures", "switched_from": "", "story": "Nordwand Mono \u2013 A monospace font for coders and adventurers"}, {"id": 801404866, "item_id": 50087804, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50087804", "by": "strenholme", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have used Fontforge to remove all ligatures from a programming font", "excerpt": "I have used Fontforge to remove all ligatures from a programming font; e.g. my monospace font of choice is a aggressively subsetted variant of Fira Code with no ligatures whatsoever. https://github.com/samboy/CaulixtlaFonts/tree/main/MiscFonts/VenusTerm", "context": "", "use_case": "removing font ligatures", "switched_from": "", "story": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font"}, {"id": 786354704, "item_id": 49147169, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147169", "by": "sterlind", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "you can easily prove me wrong by finding a single professional font designer who uses FontForge as their daily driver.", "excerpt": "again, you can easily prove me wrong by finding a single professional font designer who uses FontForge as their daily driver.", "context": "", "use_case": "font design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Glyphs 4 \u2013 the leading Mac font editor"}, {"id": 786201296, "item_id": 49137581, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49137581", "by": "sterlind", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use FontForge because I'm a pleb hobbyist without a Mac", "excerpt": "please find me a single professional font designer who uses FontForge. just one. I use FontForge because I'm a pleb hobbyist without a Mac, but it's like comparing yachts and life rafts.", "context": "hobbyist without a Mac", "use_case": "font design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Glyphs 4 \u2013 the leading Mac font editor"}, {"id": 783471152, "item_id": 48966947, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966947", "by": "yorwba", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you want a tutorial, http://designwithfontforge.com might be up your alley.", "excerpt": "If you want a tutorial, http://designwithfontforge.com might be up your alley.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making Software: How to make a font"}, {"id": 772601760, "item_id": 48287610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48287610", "by": "IgorPartola", "date": "2026-05-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Font Forge is fantastic and very easy to use", "excerpt": "I worked on an embedded project a few years ago using a tiny 128x64 display and wanted to use a pixel font but none of the ones I found made me particularly happy so I made my own. Turns out it is very easy to do. Font Forge is fantastic and very easy to use and once you get going by nailing down a few letters at the size you want you can quickly make something that is cohesive, pleasant, and easy to read. I highly r", "context": "", "use_case": "making pixel fonts", "switched_from": "", "story": "A few interesting modern pixel fonts"}, {"id": 763014466, "item_id": 47688404, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47688404", "by": "WillAdams", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "using FontForge", "excerpt": "Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34339459 (157 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27645605 (74 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41989322 (106 comments) Note that there's a version of it as a single page: https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/full/ which is a bit easier to reference. Used it a lot as a guide when working on the Shapeoko wiki (which is now off-line), so ma", "context": "", "use_case": "font creation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hobby CNC machining and resin casting (2015)"}, {"id": 756967937, "item_id": 47310496, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47310496", "by": "Fnoord", "date": "2026-03-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "There's very good OCR models. Then it becomes a matter of which letter is which. In Latin script there's only 26 possibilities, and then there's numbers and symbols. 1) https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-ocr-3", "context": "", "use_case": "Font editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fontcrafter: Turn Your Handwriting into a Real Font"}, {"id": 756918321, "item_id": 47307395, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47307395", "by": "ghrl", "date": "2026-03-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used to create two fonts and merge them with FontForge to get a complete usable font.", "excerpt": "There used to be multiple tools like this from different websites, but they were all bought by Calligraphr to redirect to them instead, giving them an effective monopoly and letting them charge subscription fees for generating fonts over the limits of the free version. I used to create two fonts and merge them with FontForge to get a complete usable font. Great to see some competition on the market. Completely in the", "context": "", "use_case": "merging fonts", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fontcrafter: Turn Your Handwriting into a Real Font"}, {"id": 753086480, "item_id": 47067905, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067905", "by": "ssttoo", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "So now I\u2019m spending quality time with FOSS called FontForge.", "excerpt": "Excellent! For a music project of mine I found MusGlyph [1] which is also all about ligatures, like typing ssss for 4 beamed sixteenth notes. There are some ligatures I need that are not in the font, I contacted the author and he encouraged me to add them myself. So now I\u2019m spending quality time with FOSS called FontForge. Also subsetting a ligature-heavy font for the web turns out an interesting challenge. Wrote up ", "context": "", "use_case": "adding ligatures to font", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making a font with ligatures to display thirteenth-century monk numerals"}, {"id": 746753729, "item_id": 46672108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672108", "by": "gucci-on-fleek", "date": "2026-01-18", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Even the TeX Gyre fonts use FontForge [0] rather than Metafont.", "excerpt": "It's not very easy to use Metafont and its derivatives to produce a modern TrueType/OpenType font. Even the TeX Gyre fonts use FontForge [0] rather than Metafont. [0]: https://ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/tex-gyre/source", "context": "", "use_case": "Font editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Xenia \u2013 A monospaced font built with a custom Python engine"}]}