Re: [fontforge-users] FontForge on OS X, opening an existing font

[Michael S. <ms...@uc...>]

> On Sep 3, 2015, at 2:41 PM, Kenneth Reid Beesley <krb...@gm...> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 3Sep2015, at 13:05, Dave Crossland <da...@la...> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> <snip>
>> 
>> When "open -a FontForge" your script calls what I assume is the latest packaged release, at /Applications/FontForge.app, which is the same as double clicking that app icon in Finder. 
>> 
>> When you do so, you run this shell script:
>> 
>> https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/blob/master/osx/FontForge.app/Contents/MacOS/FontForge
>> 
>> You would need to edit that shell script, and yours, to pass the arguments supplied to the actual fontforge executable. 
> 
> Whoa!   That’s more than I anticipated.  With respect, I think that this script is broken.  Here’s what I’ve found:
> 
> 1.  I’ve just taken a look at the script you cite (following the exact link above).  I’m not an shell-script expert by any means, and some of it makes my
> eyes cross, but it ends with the following if-statement, which looks reasonable:
> 
> if [ $# -eq 0 ] ; then
>     ( exec $WRAPPER $bundle_bin/fontforge -new & )
> else
>     ( exec $WRAPPER $bundle_bin/fontforge "$@" & )
> fi
> 
> That means that if the script is called with no command-line arguments (i.e. the count of arguments, stored in $#, is zero [ $# -eq 0 ]) then
> execute the $WRAPPER with
> fontforge -new
> which will bring up FontForge with a default empty new ISO-8859-1 font.  That makes sense.
> Else (if there is at least one command line argument) then execute the $WRAPPER with
> fontforge “$@“
> As usual, $@ represents (is expanded to) all the original command-line arguments.  That also makes perfect sense.  It looks to me like the _intent_ of the script is to pass along the command-line arguments typed by the user.  So the _intent_ was to allow me to invoke
> $ fontforge myfont.otf
> and have myfont.otf opened rather than a new empty font.  Again, I think that was the _intent_ of the script, and it probably worked in some previous version.
> *** The plot thickens ...
> 2.  But now I look at the FontForge.app/Contents/MacOS/FontForge script in the version that I just downloaded and installed (the downloaded disc image file is FontForge-2015-04-30-Mac.app.dmg, which I opened to find FontForge.app, which I dragged into /Applications/), and the final if-statement, shown above, has been changed, with the two call formulas conflated to the following single line:
> $WRAPPER $bundle_bin/fontforge -new "$@“ &
> That is, it looks like the current script is always calling fontforge with the -new argument followed by any user-supplied command-line arguments (which might be ignored in such a case).
> **** Is there a shell-script expert in the house?
> 3.  I tried commenting out this one final line and substituting a copy of the if-statement shown above from a previous release, and that didn’t seem to help.  I suspect that the problem lies in the definition of WRAPPER, which I haven’t figured out yet.  It looks suspicious to me (see especially, in the same file, the definition and re-definition of WRAPPER before it is actually invoked inside the definition itself—-there’s also a suspicious call to WRAPPER that is commented out). The change to the final invocation(s) of fontforge looks suspicious.  In short, I suspect that this script is broken, and I suggest that the problem lies in the definition of WRAPPER.  Perhaps one of you is better than I am at reading and fixing such scripts.
> Best,
> Ken
> 

There are some other problems with the script. In my case, WRAPPER is not the problem---as I am not using debug mode, it is empty. (Check the contents of /tmp/oo.) The greater problem is that when you try, for example, 

open -a "FontForge" fontname.sfd

fontname.sfd is not passed to the fontforge shell script, and $# is set to 0. Thus the behavior you described. One should mention that the new empty file it opens is with a new copy of FontForge. The script fontforge-crash-reporter.py which is supposed to prevent multiple instances of FontForge is not there yet.

In my experience, the only reliable way to open a font file with FontForge is through its open dialog, and I created a rather involved AppleScript upon which font files could be dropped, and which would respond to double-clicking on a font file by opening them in FontForge.

Michael