This is a step by step tutorial on how to port a font to the iPhone OS.

You will need the following tools:

    •    FontLab Studio

This will be the only tool we will need. You can get it here.

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Okay, now lets continue with the tutorial.

To be able to port fonts over you will need the standard fonts from the iPhone. You can either fetch them yourself via SSH by going into:

    ▪    /System/Library/Fonts/Cache/

The needed files are:

    ▪    Helvetica.ttf
    ▪    HelveticaBold.ttf
    ▪    LockClock.ttf
    ▪    MarkerFeltThin.ttf
    ▪    MarkerFeltWide.ttf

The second option would be to use the files I already fetched from my phone.
They can be found here: http://dznr.org/n54s

The steps provided will be the same even if you are porting a system, clock or a notes font.

Now lets assume we will be porting over Verdana for the iPhone

1. Open up the standard Helvetica and HelveticaBold from the iPhone, use either your own or the ones I provided. The font window should look something like this:



2. Now open the font you want to port over to the iPhone with FontLab Studio aswell. Now, this is the most important part. Press Command + A to select all the glyphs and then press Command + ALT + F. This will bring up the Font Info window. You will have menubar at the left side of the window. Now go into Metrics and Dimensions. The window should look like this:



3. This is the part where we make the font ready for the phone. As you can see verdana has an UPM of 2048 and in iPhone OS 3.0 2048 is the needed value aswell. If the font had an UPM lower than 2048 before the font then make sure the following checkbox is activated but if the font is already 2048 make sure the checkbox is unchecked and continue.

"Scale all glyphs according to UPM size change"

4. Now we are back at the glyph map again. If all the glyphs are still selected then press the command Command + C to copy the glyphs.

5. Now, go back to the iPhone standard font, Helvetica and select all glyphs using Command + A. When your table goes green you press Command + Alt + V, this is the command "Paste Special". A little window should popup, mark the checkboxes as the image below shows.



6. You should now be noticing some changes. The former glyphs have now been replaced with the glyphs from the font you want to port. In this case, Verdana.

7. Something you should look out for is that sometimes when you paste the new glyphs the CF25 glyph disappears. The CF25 is the little dot used when writing passwords etc. If this glyph is not present there will just be a blank box. Best thing to do is to use the command Command + F. The window that pops up should be set like this to be able to find just that glyph:



If the glyph is there you can continue with saving your project by going under File > Save As. This is just for safety. First time porting a font often takes some practice and it's not nice if the program crashes and you have to redo it all. If the glyph isn't present you will have to open up any font and look up that glyph and follow the guide but for just that glyph. You easily mark the glyph alone by just single clicking it. When you saved your project press Command + Alt + F to bring up the Font info once again. Double check the Metrics and Dimensions so that it is still set to 2048 with the scaling checkbox unchecked.

8. Once you one this you can go on and generate your font by pressing Command + ALT + G. Be sure to still have the font named Helvetica even though this can be changed afterwards. Save the file where you want to, the files name should match the name in the screenshot below.



9. If you are going to port a system font just like we did now you need to port bort the font to both Helvetica.ttf and HelveticaBold.ttf otherwise you will have different fonts in your system. The procedure is the same to port the other font.

9. If everything passed by as normal then your font is ready to be used on the iPhone. Put the font in: /System/Library/Fonts/Cache/
Be sure to make a backup of the old files. The best way to do that is to add .org to the old files extension. Then you can just drop it in. To get the font to show correctly you willl have to restart SpringBoard.

Credits to:

Guarav Giri - The one who first learned me how to port a font through his tutorial and gave me support.

Guarav's Guide:
http://blog.gauravgiri.com/2008/08/tuto … to-iphone/

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For the people experiencing the 99% error:
Save your exisiting project font and then restart FontLab. Now you can open up the project again and save successfully. This is a bug with FontLab 5.0.2 and Mac OS Leopard.

Enjoy!

Last edited by Plizzo (Oct 30, 2008 4:33 pm)