Alternatives to the Font Squirrel webfont generator?

[Robin S]

The Font Squirrel webfont generator has been giving me grief recently. Changes seem to have been introduced that give me two problems:

1. A number of freely licensed fonts can no longer be converted to webfonts due to false positives on some kind of generalised blacklist. It seems that the vendor of the font is checked on upload and if that vendor also sells retail fonts then the uploaded font cannot be converted. Even some fonts downloaded from Font Squirrel itself can no longer be converted.

Examples:
https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/source-sans-pro
https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/clear-sans

2. Fonts that I have made customisations to in FontLab are now declared "corrupt" despite working normally in desktop applications, being convertable by other (inferior) online converters and previously working fine in the Font Squirrel generator.

Anyway, this has made me realise how dependent I am on a single online service and I'd like to find a good alternative if possible.

Does anyone know of a Mac or PC desktop application that can generate webfonts with anything approaching the level of control possible in the Font Squirrel generator? Or a good online alternative? I need features like:

• WOFF2 generation
• custom subsetting
• OpenType features & flattening

Thanks for any suggestions.

[diogo]

There is FontPrep https://github.com/briangonzalez/fontprep. This tools is not maintained for at least 2 years, but it's freely available and works.

Just a small note: Be aware that the fact that a desktop font is free, doesn't mean that it can be used as a webfont. You should read the license carefully, and if it doesn't mention webfonts, you should contact the vendor/creator and ask. This also applies to fonts served by FontSquirrel.

[Zeka]

Hi.

You can try these two online tools, they both do not use blacklists

https://fontie.flowyapps.com/home

http://transfonter.org/

[Robin S]

Thanks for the replies.

16 hours ago, diogo said:

There is FontPrep

I licensed FontPrep years ago when it was a closed-source app, and even bought an old Macbook especially to run it on (I'm a PC user normally). The downsides to FontPrep are bugs, no WOFF2 support, and the fact that subsetting has to be manually specified for each individual font. But is seems like it's just about the only show in town for desktop webfont conversion with a GUI (the only other alternative I can see is TransType which doesn't even do subsetting). To be honest I think the main reason I don't use it routinely is the hassle of booting up another computer for a single task. And that's just laziness so I'll give it another look now that I'm running into problems with Font Squirrel.

 

14 hours ago, Zeka said:

You can try these two online tools, they both do not use blacklists

https://fontie.flowyapps.com/home

http://transfonter.org/

Thanks, I've used both of these in the past. While neither has anything like the feature set of the Font Squirrel generator and Fontie has no WOFF2 support they do at least work for the wrongly-blacklisted fonts. Transfonter is my pick of the two because it generates WOFF2 and allows the conversion of multiple fonts simultaneously.

 

It does surprise me that there aren't more offerings for quality webfont conversion. It's something I'd happily pay for. I'd love to know how much market share the Font Squirrel generator has. Seems like a lot of eggs in one basket - if they shut up shop for one reason or another it would be a minor catastrophe.

[szabesz]

Have you tried this app?

https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/creating-an-icon-webfont

[Robin S]

12 hours ago, szabesz said:

Have you tried this app?

Thanks for the suggestion. I haven't used Glyphs (it's not cross-platform and I'd need to upgrade my ancient Mac) but I was aware it can export webfonts.

Because Glyphs is a font creator/editor first-and-foremost I think the workflow for webfont conversion might be a bit slow. I figure you would have to open and export each font individually. Or maybe some sort of batch script is possible.

I heard back from Font Squirrel this morning and they have de-blacklisted the fonts I noted above. I'm pleased about that, and it sounds like I can contact them whenever I find a font that is wrongly blacklisted and they will correct that. So I think I'll persevere with Font Squirrel wherever possible and fall back to Transfonter if needed.

 

[Zahari M.]

Hi Guys

For any amateurs like me who have an interest in typography and ended up having a play with Glyphs but couldn't quite figure out how to use certain aspects of it like masters and other family things, since we are amateurs, there is a proper training course available for Glyphs at lynda dot com here  

I haven't seen it myself, but having subscribed to lynda in the past I feel confident it should be of some good value for sure!

Cheers!

[elabx]

Pumping this up to see if anybody knows of a newer tool for this?

[wbmnfktr]

Not sure if this helps in this case here but when it came to glyphs and subsets I played with: https://wakamaifondue.com/

You drop a file into it, can see what the font is capable of and go from there.

Another tool I found in my bookmarks is this: https://github.com/zachleat/glyphhanger

To create subsets and such. Don't know if this stil works.