SVG to webfont converter for Grunt
Generate custom icon webfonts from SVG files via Grunt. Inspired by Font Custom.
This task will make all you need to use font-face icon on your website: font in all needed formats, CSS/Sass/Less/Stylus and HTML demo page.
Features
- Works on Mac, Windows and Linux.
- Very flexible.
- Supports all web font formats: WOFF, WOFF2, EOT, TTF and SVG.
- Semantic: uses Unicode private use area.
- Cross-browser: IE8+.
- BEM or Bootstrap output CSS style.
- CSS preprocessors support.
- Data:uri embedding.
- Ligatures.
- HTML preview.
- Custom templates.
Installation
This plugin requires Grunt 0.4. Note that ttfautohint
is optional, but your generated font will not be properly hinted if it’s not installed. And make sure you don’t use ttfautohint
0.97 because that version won’t work.
OS X
brew install ttfautohint fontforge --with-python
npm install grunt-webfont --save-dev
You may need to use sudo
for brew
, depending on your setup.
fontforge
isn’t required for node
engine (see below).
Linux
sudo apt-get install fontforge ttfautohint
npm install grunt-webfont --save-dev
fontforge
isn’t required for the node
engine (see below).
Windows
npm install grunt-webfont --save-dev
Then install ttfautohint
(optional).
Then install fontforge
.
- Download and install fontforge.
- Add
C:\Program Files (x86)\FontForgeBuilds\bin
to yourPATH
environment variable.
fontforge
isn’t required for the node
engine (see below).
Available Engines
There are two font rendering engines available. See also engine
option below.
fontforge
Pros
- All features supported.
- The best results.
Cons
- You have to install
fontforge
. - Really weird bugs sometimes.
node
Pros
- No external dependencies (except optional
ttfautohint
). - Works on all platforms.
Cons
- Doesn’t work with some SVG files.
- Ligatures aren’t supported.
Configuration
Add somewhere in your Gruntfile.js
:
grunt;
Inside your Gruntfile.js
file add a section named webfont
. See Parameters section below for details.
Parameters
src
Type: string|array
Glyphs list: SVG. String or array. Wildcards are supported.
dest
Type: string
Directory for resulting files.
destCss
Type: string
Default: dest
value
Directory for resulting CSS files (if different than font directory). You can also define destScss
, destSass
, destLess
and destStyl
to specify a directory per stylesheet type.
Options
All options should be inside options
object:
webfont:icons:src: 'icons/*.svg'dest: 'build/fonts'options:...
font
Type: string
Default: icons
Name of font and base name of font files.
fontFilename
Type: string
Default: Same as font
option
Filename for generated font files, you can add placeholders for the same data that gets passed to the template.
For example, to get the hash to be part of the filenames:
options: fontFilename: 'icons-{hash}'
hashes
Type: boolean
Default: true
Append font file names with unique string to flush browser cache when you update your icons.
styles
Type: string|array
Default: 'font,icon'
List of styles to be added to CSS files: font
(font-face
declaration), icon
(base .icon
class), extra
(extra stuff for Bootstrap (only for syntax
= 'bootstrap'
).
types
Type: string|array
Default: 'eot,woff,ttf'
, available: 'eot,woff2,woff,ttf,svg'
Font files types to generate.
order
Type: string|array
Default: 'eot,woff,ttf,svg'
Order of @font-face
’s src
values in CSS file. (Only file types defined in types
option will be generated.)
syntax
Type: string
Default: bem
Icon classes syntax. bem
for double class names: icon icon_awesome
or bootstrap
for single class names: icon-awesome
.
template
Type: string
Default: ``
Custom CSS template path (see tasks/templates
for some examples). Should be used instead of syntax
. (You probably need to define htmlDemoTemplate
option too.)
Template is a pair of CSS and JSON (optional) files with the same name.
For example, your Gruntfile:
options: template: 'my_templates/tmpl.css'
my_templates/tmpl.css
:
my_templates/tmpl.json
:
Some extra data is available for you in templates:
-
hash
: a unique string to flush browser cache. Available even ifhashes
option isfalse
. -
fontRawSrcs
: array of font-face’s src values not merged to a single line:
[
[
'url("icons.eot")'
],
[
'url("icons.eot?#iefix") format("embedded-opentype")',
'url("icons.woff") format("woff")',
'url("icons.ttf") format("truetype")'
]
]
templateOptions
Type: object
Default: {}
Extends/overrides CSS template or syntax’s JSON file. Allows custom class names in default css templates.
options:templateOptions:baseClass: 'glyph-icon'classPrefix: 'glyph_'
stylesheets
Type: array
Default: ['css']
or extension of template
Stylesheet type. Can be css
, sass
, scss
or less
. If sass
or scss
is used, _
will prefix the file (so it can be a used as a partial). You can define just stylesheet
if you are generating just one type.
relativeFontPath
Type: string
Default: null
Custom font path. Will be used instead of destCss
in CSS file. Useful with CSS preprocessors.
fontPathVariables
Type: boolean
Default: false
Create font-path variables for less
, scss
and sass
files. Can be used to override the relativeFontPath
in custom preprocessor tasks or configs.
The variable name is a combination of the font
name appended with -font-path
.
version
Type: string
Default: false
Version number added to .ttf
version of the font (FontForge Engine only). Also used in the heading of the default demo.html template. Useful to align with the version of other assets that are part of a larger system.
htmlDemo
Type: boolean
Default: true
If true
, an HTML file will be available (by default, in destCSS
folder) to test the render.
htmlDemoTemplate
Type: string
Default: null
Custom demo HTML template path (see tasks/templates/demo.html
for an example) (requires htmlDemo
option to be true).
htmlDemoFilename
Type: string
Default: fontBaseName
value
Custom name for the demo HTML file (requires htmlDemo
option to be true). Useful if you want to name the output something like index.html
instead of the font name.
destHtml
Type: string
Default: destCss
value
Custom demo HTML demo path (requires htmlDemo
option to be true).
embed
Type: string|array
Default: false
If true
embeds WOFF (only WOFF) file as data:uri.
IF ttf
or woff
or ttf,woff
embeds TTF or/and WOFF file.
If there are more file types in types
option they will be included as usual url(font.type)
CSS links.
ligatures
Type: boolean
Default: false
If true
the generated font files and stylesheets will be generated with opentype ligature features. The character sequences to be replaced by the ligatures are determined by the file name (without extension) of the original SVG.
For example, you have a heart icon in love.svg
file. The HTML <h1>I <span class="ligature-icons">love</span> you!</h1>
will be rendered as I ♥ you!
.
rename
Type: function
Default: path.basename
You can use this function to change how file names translates to class names (the part after icon_
or icon-
). By default it’s a name of a file.
For example you can group your icons into several folders and add folder name to class name:
options: { // .icon_entypo-add, .icon_fontawesome-add, etc. return path path; }
skip
Type: boolean
Default: false
If true
task will not be ran. In example, you can skip task on Windows (becase of difficult installation):
options: skip: platform === 'win32'
engine
Type: string
Default: fontforge
Font rendering engine: fontforge
or node
. See comparison in Available Engines section above.
ie7
Type: boolean
Default: false
Adds IE7 support using a *zoom: expression()
hack.
optimize
Type: boolean
Default: true
If false
the SVGO optimization will not be used. This is useful in cases where the optimizer will produce faulty web fonts by removing relevant SVG paths or attributes.
normalize
Type: boolean
Default: false
When using the fontforge engine, if false, glyphs will be generated with a fixed width equal to fontHeight. In most cases, this will produce an extra blank space for each glyph. If set to true, no extra space will be generated. Each glyph will have a width that matches its boundaries.
startCodepoint
Type: integer
Default: 0xF101
Starting codepoint used for the generated glyphs. Defaults to the start of the Unicode private use area.
codepoints
Type: object
Default: null
Specific codepoints to use for certain glyphs. Any glyphs not specified in the codepoints block will be given incremented as usual from the startCodepoint
, skipping duplicates.
options: codepoints: single: 0xE001
codepointsFile
Type: string
Default: null
Uses and Saves the codepoint mapping by name to this file.
NOTE: will overwrite the set codepoints option.
autoHint
Type: boolean
Default: true
Enables font auto hinting using ttfautohint
.
round
Type: number
Default: 10e12
Setup SVG path rounding.
fontHeight
Type: number
Default: 512
The output font height.
fontFamilyName
Type: string
Default: font
value
If you’d like your generated fonts to have a name that’s different than the font
value, you can specify this as a string. This will allow a unique display name within design authoring tools when installing fonts locally. For example, your font’s name could be GitHub Octicons
with a filename of octicons.ttf
.
options: fontFamilyName: 'GitHub Octicons'
descent
Type: number
Default: 64
The font descent. The descent should be a positive value. The ascent formula is: ascent = fontHeight - descent
.
callback
Type: function
Default: null
Allows for a callback to be called when the task has completed and passes in the filename of the generated font, an array of the various font types created, an array of all the glyphs created and the hash used to flush browser cache.
options: { // ... }
customOutputs
Type: array
Default: undefined
Allows for custom content to be generated and output in the same way as htmlDemo
.
Each entry in customOutputs
should be an object with the following parameters:
template
- (string
) the path to the underscore-template you wish to use.dest
- (string
) the path to the destination where you want the resulting file to live.context
[optional] - (object
) a hash of values to pass into the context of the template
At compile-time each template will have access to the same context as the compile-time environment of htmlDemoTemplate
(as extended by the context
object, if provided. See config-example below.
execMaxBuffer
If you get stderr maxBuffer exceeded warning message, engine probably logged a lot of warning messages. To see this warnings run grunt in verbose mode grunt --verbose
. To go over this warning you can try to increase buffer size by this option. Default value is 1024 * 200
Config Examples
Simple font generation
webfont: icons: src: 'icons/*.svg' dest: 'build/fonts'
Custom font name, fonts and CSS in different folders
webfont: icons: src: 'icons/*.svg' dest: 'build/fonts' destCss: 'build/fonts/css' options: font: 'ponies'
Custom CSS classes
webfont: icons: src: 'icons/*.svg' dest: 'build/fonts' options: syntax: 'bem' templateOptions: baseClass: 'glyph-icon' classPrefix: 'glyph_'
To use with CSS preprocessor
webfont: icons: src: 'icons/*.svg' dest: 'build/fonts' destCss: 'build/styles' options: stylesheet: 'styl' relativeFontPath: '/build/fonts'
Embedded font file
webfont: icons: src: 'icons/*.svg' dest: 'build/fonts' options: types: 'woff' embed: true
Custom Outputs
webfont: icons: src: 'icons/*.svg' dest: 'build/fonts' options: customOutputs: template: 'templates/icon-glyph-list-boilerplate.js' dest: 'build/js/icon-glyph-list.js' template: 'templates/icon-glyph-config-boilerplate.json' dest: 'build/js/icon-glyphs.json' template: 'templates/icon-web-home.html' dest: 'build/' context: homeHeading: 'Your Icon Font' homeMessage: 'The following glyphs are available in this font:'
We might then include the following corresponding templates.
The first, for icon-glyph-list-boilerplate.js
, a file that outputs a list of icon-glyph slugs.
// file: icon-glyph-list-boilerplate.js
(function(window) {
'use strict';
var iconList = <%= JSON.stringify(glyphs) %>;
window.iconList = iconList;
}(this));
The second, for icon-glyph-config-boilerplate.json
, a file that dumps all JSON data in the current template context.
// file: icon-glyph-config-boilerplate.json
<%= JSON.stringify(arguments[0], null, '\t') %>
And finally, the third, for icon-web-home.html
, a file that has access to the values provided in the context
object supplied.
// file: icon-web-home.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html class="no-js">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Context Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1><%= homeHeading %></h1>
<p><%= homeMessage %></p>
<ul>
<% for (var i = 0; i < glyphs.length; i++) { %>
<li><a href="#"><%= glyphs[i] %></a></li>
<% } %>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
CSS Preprocessors Caveats
You can change CSS file syntax using stylesheet
option (see above). It change file extension (so you can specify any) with some tweaks. Replace all comments with single line comments (which will be removed after compilation).
Dynamic font-path
You can enable the fontPathVariables
in combination with relativeFontPath
to create a overridable font-path.
For example scss:
;
Sass
If stylesheet
option is sass
or scss
, _
will prefix the file (so it can be a used as a partial).
Less
If stylesheet
option is less
, regular CSS icon classes will be expanded with corresponding Less mixins.
The Less mixins then may be used like so:
Troubleshooting
I have problems displaying the font in Firefox
Firefox doesn’t allow cross-domain fonts: Specifications, Bugzilla Ticket, How to fix it.
My images are getting corrupted
Using the node engine
- Certain SVG's are not supported. See the svg2ttf project which is used to convert from SVG to TTF (which is then converted forward to WOFF and WOFF2).
autoHint
also adjusts the font file and can cause your font to look different to the SVG, so you could try switching it off (though it may make windows view of the font worse).
Using fontforge
Check the following...
- Your paths are clockwise. Anti-clockwise paths may cause fills to occur differently.
- Your paths are not overlapping. Overlapping paths will cause one of the areas to be inverted rather than combined. Use an editor to union your two paths together.
autoHint
also adjusts the font file and can cause your font to look different to the SVG, so you could try switching it off (though it may make windows view of the font worse).- If you get stderr maxBuffer exceeded warning message, fontforge probably logged a lot of warning messages. To see this warnings run grunt in verbose mode
grunt --verbose
. To go over this warning you can try to increase buffer size by execMaxBuffer.
Changelog
The changelog can be found on the Releases page.
License
The MIT License, see the included License.md file.