Bitmap Font Editor vs Type Light

Bitmap Font Editor is a free desktop tool for creating monochrome bitmap fonts, particularly for retro computers and embedded targets such as the SAM Coupe. It supports fixed-width and variable-width fonts, with adjustable advance width for each glyph. Users draw glyphs in cells up to 32×32 pixels by clicking or dragging to paint and erase; draggable font guides and pinned reference glyphs are also available. Editing tools include undo, redo, copy, paste, clear, invert, flip, and shift. An editable sample text preview offers three zoom levels and white-on-black or black-on-white display. Raw font bitmaps can be imported with settings for starting codepoint, geometry, and byte layout. Projects use the losslessly round-trippable .fnt.json format. Export produces a 1bpp bitmap plus JSON sidecar files for widths and character mapping. Release 0.1.3 offers Windows, macOS, and Linux builds, with SHA-256 checksums. The source is MIT-licensed. Windows and macOS builds are unsigned, and system-font filling is disabled because Canvas 2D lacks TrueType hinting access.

Type Light is a free TrueType font editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It creates and modifies TTF fonts, including custom symbol and barcode fonts. Drawing tools make glyphs from straight lines and quadratic Bézier curves, with operations for combining or subtracting shapes. You can assign Unicode values or custom encodings to glyph slots and set horizontal metrics. Basic kerning tables and pair adjustments are supported. Metadata controls cover family name, style flags, copyright strings, and embedding permissions. The editor exports Windows-compatible TTF files that the product page says work in Office applications, Adobe products, and web browsers. No registration is required, and the free plan has no feature restrictions or trial period. Created fonts may be used commercially. Type Light does not provide OpenType features, variable fonts, or PostScript Type 1 support, and its undo history is limited.