What is AFDKO?
AFDKO (Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType) is a free, open source toolkit for building, editing, and testing OpenType fonts. It was originally developed by Adobe and is now hosted on GitHub.
Some key features of AFDKO include:
- Font development tools like makeotf, which compiles a PostScript font into an OpenType font
- Editing tools like makeotfexe and FontLab Studio plug-ins
- Applications for applying advanced typographic OpenType features
- Utilities for checking font quality and validation
- Documentation and sample files for learning OpenType concepts
AFDKO enables type designers and font developers to tap into the advanced typographic and layout capabilities of OpenType fonts. With the toolkit, complex script font development and applying OpenType features like swashes, discretionary ligatures, and contextual alternates are made much easier.
The toolkit is completely free and open source, licensed under Apache 2.0. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, and is hosted on GitHub for community contributions. Major font editors like Glyphs and Robofont have integrated AFDKO for building and compiling fonts.