how to remove characters from a font file?

Question

i've downloaded the DejaVu open source font and want to use it ad a WebFont, but even when converting it, i get a large file, and because the website i'll use will be only in few languages (arabic, french, amazigh) then, i dont need some characters.

so is there a way to browse the font file and delete the unnecessary range of unicode characters that i'll not need?

Answers are probably all there: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14557944/downsizing-an-otf-font-by-removing-glyphs — Vic Seedoubleyew, Aug 14 '19 at 15:34

Mohammad Alhashash · Answer 1 · 2021-12-04T07:51:08.683

18

Using FontForge, you may open Element->Font Info->Unicode Ranges. You will see all available ranges and you can select a whole Unicode range with a single click. Then, you can tune your selection and delete using Encoding->Detach & Remove Glyphs.

Also, you can use Edit->Select->Select by Script.

edited Dec 04 '21 at 07:51

answered May 15 '15 at 16:53

Mohammad Alhashash

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score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 28 '18 at 22:27

The easiest method I found is to use pyftsubset tool from FontTools. Here's an example:

$ pyftsubset NotoSans-Regular.ttf \
      --unicodes=U+0400-045F,U+0490-0491,U+04B0-04B1,U+2116 \
      --output-file=NotoSans-Regular.cyrillic.woff2 \
      --flavor=woff2

Note: woff2 output requires Brotli.

I wrote a simple script around it which automates the whole process including generation of a CSS file after splitting the font file. You may find it here: https://github.com/johncf/ttf2web

For anyone wondering, this also worked with an OTF font for me. — Ed_, Feb 21 '19 at 13:38

how to remove characters from a font file?

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