How to export fonts from one ttf and merge into another ttf?

[Kehui Li]

Hi, all. I'm quite a new comer to the font processing area. Would anyone please give me any guide of hint about how to use sfntly to add new fonts to a ttf file?

The effect I want is: I have an almost empty ttf file which has few fonts, and several complete ttf files that has a complete set of fonts. when a char comes in, look into the small(empty) ttf, if the char is not in it, find the char in a specified complete ttf file, export its whole info, then add them to the small(empty) ttf. Thus the small(empty) ttf file becomes bigger and bigger with more searches. My question is:

1. Is this feature possible by using sfntly?

2. What methods should I look into for different purpose, i.e., how to check whether a char is in one ttf file? How to export the whole font info from an existing ttf file? How to add those exported info to another ttf file, thus app can use it as normal ttf file? 

I'm not sure if I explained my situation clearly, I'm happy to give more details if needed. Thanks a lot.

[Brian Stell]

How/where do you plan to use the 'bigger' font? 

There are a lot of free good quality fonts such as Noto (http://code.google.com/p/noto/), Source Sans (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcesans.adobe/), Ubuntu (http://font.ubuntu.com/), ...

There are many technical and IP (eg, copyright) issues with amalgamating a bunch of fonts into a single bigger font. Piecing together a ttf from parts is like building a car by adding parts from other cars. All cars have engines but how they actually bolt into the car varies, how they attach to the transmission varies, etc.

Fonts contain glyphs and the details (eg, design units, EM size, ...) vary. It is possible to attach a Honda generator to a Ford engine but this requires a lot of skills/effort and getting the right part is typically easier.

As to you question about using sfntly: sfntly is a (Java/C) library that programmers can use to build programs. One could write a lot of code to do what you propose but the end result would be a mish-mash. Think of vehicles in Mad Max (http://www.madmaxmovies.com/mad-max-beyond-thunderdome/cars-and-vehicles/index.html)

Cheers,

Brian

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