VFB3UFO(1)

💅 VFB3UFO ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the vfb3ufo manual page (that's section 1, General Commands Manual, if you're keeping track) 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

vfb3ufo — convert a FontLab Studio 5 VFB file to UFO 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

vfb3ufo [options] inputpath [outputpath]

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So here's the tea, bestie: vfb3ufo converts a FontLab Studio 5 VFB file to one UFO per master. Not one UFO. One per master. It's giving ✨thorough✨.

And like — the whole reason this exists? FontLab's own vfb2ufo converter only outputs UFO v2 and, no cap, contains serious bugs. So we did it ourselves. 😌 The command line options are compatible with FontLab's vfb2ufo, so you don't have to relearn anything.

The output is a normalized UFO v3 🫶 written to inputpath.ufo — or compressed to inputpath.ufoz if you pass -z — and it lands in the same directory as the input file, unless you give an outputpath or use the -p option.

⚠️ Existing files will not be overwritten unless you specify -fo. protect your files, babes 💀

Now the features, and honestly? obsessed:

• FontLab user data is output — both font level and glyph level 💜
• mark colors get written to the official UFO v3 lib key 🎨
• guideline data gets written to the official UFO v3 elements 📐
• anchors are preserved in composite glyphs ⚓
• PostScript hinting gets written to the Adobe lib key ✍️
• TrueType hinting is supported in composite glyphs 🔥
• more UFO font info attributes are supported ⭐

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -h, --help — show a help message and exit. the classic escape hatch 💖
• -p, --path PATH — output folder for the resulting UFO 📁
• -fo, --force-overwrite — force overwrite of existing output files. bold of you. but okay 😤
• -g, --keep-groups — don't move non-kerning groups from groups.plist to feature code 🌈
• -j, --json — serialize UFO as JSON; combine it with -z to write JSON without line breaks or indentation 🧚
• -k, --add-kerning-groups — add kerning groups to feature code ✨
• -ttx, --ttx — convert binary OpenType Layout data using TTX-like format 🔥
• -64, --base64 — write GLIF lib 'data' section using base64 🔐
• -s, --silent — no display (silent mode). shhh 🤫
• -n, --no-normalize — don't normalize the UFOs (faster) 🏃
• -nops, --no-postscript-hints — don't output PostScript hinting 🙈
• -v, --verbose — print debugging output. main character energy 🗣️
• -z, --zip — write UFOZ (compressed UFO) 🎁
• -m, --minimal — parse only a minimal amount of data, drop missing glyphs from groups, etc. lowkey mode 💅
• -u, --unicode-strings — force strings to be interpreted as Unicode instead of Windows-1252 🦋

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🍓 ARGUMENTS 🍓

• inputpath — input file path (.vfb) 📥
• outputpath — optional output file path (.ufo[z]) 📤

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🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

vfb2json(1), vfb2tth(1), vfbcu2qu(1), vfbdiff(1) — go read those too, they're iconic ⭐

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and that's a wrap, bestie 💜 this was the VFB3UFO(1) page, living in the General Commands Manual, so if you forget any of it just pull up the man page again. slay, go convert some fonts ✨🎀