Technical Specifications ↩
- Operating system
- Font generation
- Supported formats
- Scripting language
- Scripting API
- Embedded libraries
- RoadMap
Operating system
RoboFont runs native on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs with OS X 10.12+ with support for Dark Mode.
The Downloads page offers some RoboFont versions able to run on older macOS versions
- RoboFont 1. MacOS 10.6 — 10.9
- RoboFont 3. up to MacOS 10.10 (stable), MacOS 10.11 (working but slow)
- RoboFont 4.1. MacOS 10.11+
- RoboFont 4.2. MacOS 10.12+
Font generation
RoboFont uses the Adobe FDK internally to generate OpenType fonts. The latest release of RoboFont (4.5) embeds version 2.5.65602 of the FDK. The latest beta release embeds version 2.5.65602.
Supported formats
RoboFont 4.5 uses UFO3 as its native font format, and read/writes UFO2.
RoboFont can open OpenType fonts, with a few limitations (for example, OpenType features cannot be imported in editable format). WOFF fonts are also supported.
RoboFont can open FontLab’s .vfb files, provided the vfb2ufo library is installed.
Scripting language
RoboFont 4.5 is written entirely in Python 3.12, and uses it as its scripting language.
RoboFont comes with its own embedded Python interpreter, so you don’t need to install anything else. All modules from the Python Standard Library are also included.
Scripting API
RoboFont 4.5 uses the FontParts API (with a few extensions) to communicate to font objects programmatically.
Embedded libraries
RoboFont comes with batteries included.
The following libraries are embedded in RoboFont and available out of the box:
| embedded library | version |
|---|---|
| booleanOperations | 0.9.0 |
| compositor | 0.2b0 |
| cu2qu | 1.6.7.post2 |
| defcon | 0.10.4 |
| defconAppKit | 0.1 |
| dialogKit | |
| extractor | 0.8.1 |
| feaPyFoFum | 0.1 |
| fontmake | 3.10.0 |
| fontMath | 0.9.4 |
| fontParts | 0.12.3 |
| fontPens | 0.2.5 |
| fontTools | 4.54.1 |
| glyphConstruction | 0.0.5 |
| glyphNameFormatter | 0.7 |
| markdown | 3.2.1 |
| mutatorMath | 3.0.2 |
| ufoNormalizer | 0.6.2 |
| ufo2fdk | 0.1 |
| ufoNormalizer | 0.6.2 |
| vanilla | 0.6.1 |
RoadMap
Considering the following events:
- Python3.9 end of life set in October 2025
- First Apple M1 MacBook sold at the end of 2020
- MacOS 10.12 released in 2016
Starting from the end of 2025, RoboFont will only actively develop for Apple Silicon. Consequently, support for MacOS 12 (Monterey) and older will be dropped.