Exporting Web Fonts
In FontCreator 12, this can be automated by using the new Include in Exports Feature
Any glyphs that are marked (d) for Include in Export to Desktop (otf/ttf) will be excluded when exporting fonts for the Web (woff). I still need OpenType versions of the smaller fonts. This tip may still be useful to users of earlier versions of FontCreator.
My fonts typically have about 2,000 to 3,000 glyphs, with many symbols and dingbats. While the size of the fonts is not a problem for desktop publishing applications, on the web it would be a significant issue. Even without hinting, my Kabala Regular WOFF font is 277 Kbytes (2,369 glyphs). By removing the Symbols, Arrows, Enclosed Alphanumerics, and Dingbats that can be reduced to 153 Kbytes — still a lot, but the glyph coverage includes Latin Extended A, Latin Extended Additional for Vietnamese, Basic Greek, etc., (1,495 glyphs). By removing the GPOS kerning tables, the file size is reduced to 86 Kbytes, which is much more reasonable for the web.
To make this easy:
- Tag all of the glyphs that are not required for the Web
- Select the tagged glyphs using the Overview side panel and delete them
- Export the font to Web Font (WOFF) format
- Undo the deletion, or just close the project without saving it
