This repository is now retired. We have added a python port of its code to version 4.0.0 of AFDKO (to be released shortly, prerelease here). There is more information here. The new tool can be called from the command line as otfautohint, allowing it and psautohint to be used at the same time during a transition period. Please switch to otfautohint and file any new issues or PRs against that tool.

(psautohint was split off from AFDKO a number of years ago for technical reasons having to do with code organization. The Python port resolves those issues so we are adding it back into AFDKO to simplify distribution of our tools.)

A standalone version of AFDKO’s autohinter.

This repository currently consists of a core autohinter written in C, a Python C extension providing an interface to it, and helper Python code.

To build the C extension:

python setup.py build

To install the C extension and the helper scripts globally:

pip install -r requirements.txt .

Alternatively to install them for the current user:

pip install -r requirements.txt --user .

The autohinter can be used by running:

psautohint

To build just the autohintexe binary:

python setup.py build_exe

We have a test suite that can be run with:

pytest

For standard debugging, build with:

python setup.py build --debug

It is also possible to build a debug version with AddressSanitizer ("ASan") support (currently for Mac OS X only) with:

python setup.py build --asan
pip install .

Once it is installed, you can use the util/launch-asan.sh shell script to launch a Python process that invokes the ASan libraries needed for debugging. Attach Xcode the launched process, then execute code in the process that triggers memory usage problems and wait for ASan to do its magic.

NOTE: be sure to build and install psautohint as described above; using other techniques such as python setup.py install will cause a re-build without ASan and debug support, which won't work.