You should be scared. I don’t mean to be rude, but you should really read the instructions carefully before messing with your system… You can do some serious damage with the unix terminal.
Have you been using Homebrew? Then read the install instructions first!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — I am not an Unix-savvy user. I always have to google may way out of these kind of problems too… So I’m sorry, but I can’t help you with this matter.

Word to the wise—someone once described Mac OSX of being as much of scalpel (an elegant precision tool) as it is a a hammer drill (a very powerful tool). On the right skillful hands it can accomplish many things. On the wrong ill-informed hands… well… you can guess the rest…
So, my advice to you is: use a proper commercial, stable and specific OS recommended solution like Fontographer, Fontlab, Glyphs, or Robofont to name a few. They’re not expensive (personal license) and the forums provide lots of help.

If you still want to pursue this, try reading Dave Crossland’s manual: http://designwithfontforge.com/en-US/Installing_Fontforge.html

Best of luck!

I have absolutely no clue about anything terminal-related, so I’ve been blindly copy-and-pasting stuff to install fontforge on Snow Leopard. After “brew install fontforge” I get

configure: error: cannot run C compiled programs.
If you meant to cross compile, use `–host’.
See `config.log’ for more details.

Googling this leads me to nerdy forums that seem to be in an entirely different language :-). Suspiciously often, these forums suggest a clean install of my OS, which scares me. Any ideas what I could do to fix this?

It looks like a X11 problem. As I said before, I am not a very savvy Unix user…
But have you installed the latest XQuartz? If so, try to google the error message…

Anyway, Dave Crossland has provided an excellent learning resource that has Fontforge installation covered. Read it here: http://designwithfontforge.com/en-US/Installing_Fontforge.html

Thanks for providing this blog. Its the only one I could find that made any sense to me!

I’m on Mac OSX 10.6.8. I followed your instructions above, downloaded and installed everything. I typed ‘fontforge’ into XTerm, and got the following message:

bash-3.2$ fontforge
dyld: Library not loaded: /opt/local/lib/libXi.6.dylib
Referenced from: /opt/local/bin/fontforge
Reason: no suitable image found. Did find:
/usr/local/lib/libXi.6.dylib: stat() failed with errno=13
Trace/BPT trap
bash-3.2$

Prior to your blog, I downloaded the latest source and complied it myself. That didn’t work either. It really important to me, as I need to convert a few fonts for a client. I also see this as a worthy addition to my graphic tools. I’ve been at it for over five hours and I’m still struggling to get FontForge to work.

If anyone has any advice to set me on the correct path, I would greatly appreciate it. Obviously I’m not looking to purchase a costly alternative. Plenty of Mac users have successfully installed FontForge. So even though I’m savvier than the average user, I’m so stumped!

Thanks in advance!

Hi. Thank you very much for the updates. Now, I guess I’ll *have* to do a new revision during Christmas holidays ;)
Although I suspected as much, I’ve decided to listed you as one of the original Robofont developers, as in the people who helped bring it to life… I’ll update your info and add the Mutator and Incubator software.
As for ClearType… I’ve kind of dismissed it mainly because it’s a screen/rendering feature… not actually a font development package… If I add this kind of software, I guess I’ll have to include others also… I’ll think about it.

Anyway, thank you very much!
Cheers,
P

A few notes:
1. I should not be listed as a developer of Robofont, I only support it.
2. WOFF has gone final!
3. The apps used with GX variations, were:
a. Mutator, by Mike Reed
b. Incubator, by Sampo… both 1992
4. ClearType is missing.

Thanks again for the great overview.

Yesterday I tried a lot of thinks, others tips from others sites. i don’t understand these codes instructions. I will find a hacker friend for help me! ;)

thanks,
nice blog, i start to follow your RSS flux!