SFDDIFF(1) General Commands Manual SFDDIFF(1)
NAME
sfddiff - compare two font files
SYNOPSIS
sfddiff [--help] [--ignorehints] [--ignorenames] [--ignoregpos] [--ig-
noregsub] [--ignorebitmaps] [--exact] [--warn] [--merge outfile] [--us-
age] [--version] fontfile1 fontfile2
DESCRIPTION
The program sfddiff compares two font files, which may be in any format
that fontforge(1) can read. It will notice the following differences:
1) Characters are present in one font but not in the other.
2) Characters are present in both fonts but have different sets of
outlines or references. The outlines may be compared so that only
exact matches are accepted, or so that a fuzzier match is used.
Similarly references may need to match exactly, or may be matched
after an unlink. This fuzzy comparison is useful when comparing
truetype and postscript fonts, or when comparing a font with refer-
ences to one without.
3) The PostScript hints or TrueType instructions are different.
4) The font names (the TrueType 'name' tables) differ.
5) The kerning (and other 'gpos' information) differs.
6) The ligatures (and other 'gsub' information) differ.
7) Any bitmap strikes present in one font but not in the other.
8) Any bitmap characters present in one strike of one font but not in
the equivalent strike of the other.
9) Any bitmap characters which differ.
OPTIONS
--help Provide a description with a list of the available op-
tions.
--ignorehints Suppress the reporting of hint/instruction differences.
--ignoregpos Suppress the reporting of kerning (and other 'gpos')
differences.
--ignoregsub Suppress the reporting of ligature (and other 'gsub')
differences.
--ignorenames Suppress the reporting of name string differences.
--ignorebitmaps Suppress the reporting of bitmap differences.
--exact Require outlines to match exactly.
--warn Warn if the outlines/references are slightly different.
--merge outfile Store a merged version of the two fonts into the speci-
fied output file. The merged data will be based on
sfdfile1, any characters present in sfdfile2 but not in
sfdfile1 will be added, and the outlines of sfdfile2
will be placed in the background. Finally, for any
characters with different outlines or references the
background of the character will contain the outlines
from sfdfile2 (references will be unlinked into out-
lines and those outlines also will be added).
--usage Display the usage description.
--version Display the current version.
SEE ALSO
fontforge(1)
The HTML version of the FontForge manual, available online at:
http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/.
NOTE
FontForge used to be called PfaEdit.
AUTHORS
FontForge is Copyright © 2000–2014 by George Williams, and is currently
maintained by the FontForge development team. See /usr/share/doc/font-
forge/AUTHORS for a comprehensive list of contributors.
LICENSE
The sfddiff program is licensed under GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or
later (http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) with many parts covered by a
BSD license (http://fontforge.org/license.html). Please read the LI-
CENSE file included in the FontForge distribution for details, or see
https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/blob/master/LICENSE.
FontForge is available as a whole under the terms of the GNU GPL
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), version 3 or any later version.
However, almost all of its parts are available under the "revised BSD
license" (http://www.law.yi.org/~sfllaw/talks/bsd.pdf) because Font-
Forge was mostly written by George Williams, using that license.
The Revised BSD License is very permissive, and allows for code to be
combined with other code under other licenses.
There are many useful libraries available under copyleft libre li-
censes, such as the LGPL and GPL, which FontForge started to use in
2012.
For example, Pango and Cairo are available under the LGPL.
Some features added since 2012 are licensed by their individual devel-
opers under the GPLv3.
BUGS
See the FontForge Github Issue Tracker, at https://github.com/font-
forge/fontforge/issues/.
2017 Jun 18 SFDDIFF(1)
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