Skip to content

Blog

DfontSplitter for Windows

Yeah, so, I just released some Windows software.

My program for converting and splitting Mac OS X .dfont files into TTF files, DfontSplitter has been a pretty popular route in to my website for some time now.

While the original program is written for OS X, it became apparent from my website statistics that many people who needed to convert .dfont to .ttf were Windows users.

So, today, I have released DfontSplitter for Windows, version 0.1. This program is, again, simply a wrapper script for fondu, which does the real work. It has a completely unique GUI, custom built for the Windows platform.

There is also a brand new project page for DfontSplitter, with links to both the Mac and Windows versions of the software and the documentation too.

Hopefully this can serve the need of Windows users who need to convert those filetypes, and don’t want expensive or spyware-ridden software. Enjoy!

A quick footnote – this is a bit of a licensing quagmire. There are lots of different licenses that apply to different bits of DfontSplitter for Windows, including GPL 3.0, GPL 2.0, BSD and Creative Commons. That’s all explained on the project page, and in further depth in readme and licence files in the downloads.

Oh and it’s also slightly ugly, in terms of how it interacts with fondu. But it works. 🙂

Learning Django

I’ve been a developer in PHP for quite some time now. I don’t honestly remember when it was that I first got a working WAMP setup, which kickstarted my interest in web applications with PHP, but I certainly remember how rewarding it was to finally get it up and running and be able to start with PHP.

Since then, I’ve embarked on a fair few projects in the language, and it has served me well for a lot that I’ve done with it.

I think the time has come, though, to expand my web application and programming horizons and look at something else.

I meant to blog about quite a long time ago, but I’m now investing time into learning Django (and therefore Python as I go along).

I bought Sams Teach Yourself Django to give me some direction in my learning of the framework. From what I’ve gone through (up to Hour 10 out of 24), I’m finding it a very useful tool to help me have a project in which to learn. I might follow up with a more in-depth review of it (either here, or on FOSSwire) if I think it worthy, once I’m done with it.

Sams Teach Yourself Django

I’m also liking Django. While it lends itself more to larger projects than to small one-time scripts, it is an impressive framework on top of Python that automates lots of the things that you have to micro-manage in PHP.

Having said this, my ventures into the realm of Django and Python do not mean I’m abandoning PHP. Just as I’ve done with running Mac OS X alongside Linux without abandoning Linux, Django will become an addition to my repetoire, not a replacement for PHP. As always, it will be about the right tool for the job.