Retrieve Unicode Values in FontForge with Python

FontForge includes a native Python scripting module that allows you to inspect, modify, and automate font generation tasks. When working with glyph metadata, you can easily inspect character encodings through specific glyph attributes. This guide explains how to open a font file, iterate over its glyphs, and retrieve both primary and multiple Unicode values using the fontforge Python library.

Accessing Glyph Unicode Attributes

When a font is loaded via the fontforge module, each glyph is represented as a glyph object. FontForge provides two main attributes for accessing Unicode values:

• glyph.unicode: Returns the primary Unicode encoding point as an integer. If the glyph has no assigned Unicode code point, it returns -1.
• glyph.unicodes: Returns a tuple of all Unicode code points assigned to the glyph (useful for glyphs mapped to multiple codepoints).

Python Script Example

The following script opens a font file, iterates over every glyph, and prints both the glyph name and its corresponding Unicode code points in standard hexadecimal notation (U+XXXX).

import fontforge

# Open the font file
font = fontforge.open("path/to/font.ttf")

for glyph in font.glyphs():
    # Check if the glyph has a valid Unicode encoding
    if glyph.unicode != -1:
        # Convert decimal integer to hexadecimal Unicode representation
        hex_unicode = f"U+{glyph.unicode:04X}"
        char_repr = chr(glyph.unicode)
        
        # Check for multiple codepoints mapped to the same glyph
        all_unicodes = [f"U+{u:04X}" for u in glyph.unicodes]

        print(f"Glyph Name: {glyph.glyphname}")
        print(f"  Primary Codepoint: {hex_unicode} ({char_repr})")
        print(f"  All Codepoints:    {', '.join(all_unicodes)}")
    else:
        print(f"Glyph Name: {glyph.glyphname} (No Unicode assigned)")

# Close the font to free memory
font.close()

Retrieving a Specific Glyph by Name or Unicode

If you do not need to iterate through the entire font, you can access a glyph directly by indexing the font object using its name or decimal Unicode value:

import fontforge

font = fontforge.open("path/to/font.ttf")

# Access by glyph name
glyph_by_name = font["A"]
print(f"'A' Unicode: U+{glyph_by_name.unicode:04X}")

# Access by decimal Unicode value (65 corresponds to 'A')
glyph_by_code = font[65]
print(f"Codepoint 65 Name: {glyph_by_code.glyphname}")

font.close()