gulp-iconfont

Create a SVG/TTF/EOT/WOFF font from several SVG icons with Gulp.

You can test this library with the frontend generator before using her.

Stats

Usage

First, install gulp-iconfont as a development dependency:

npm install --save-dev gulp-iconfont

Then, add it to your gulpfile.js:

var iconfont = require('gulp-iconfont');

gulp.task('Iconfont', function(){
  gulp.src(['assets/icons/*.svg'])
    .pipe(iconfont({
      fontName: 'myfont', // required
      appendCodepoints: true // recommended option
     }))
      .on('codepoints', function(codepoints, options) {
        // CSS templating, e.g.
        console.log(codepoints, options);
      })
    .pipe(gulp.dest('www/fonts/'));
});

gulp-iconfont bundles several plugins to bring a simpler API (gulp-svgicons2svgfont, gulp-svg2tff, gulp-ttf2eot, gulp-ttf2woff) for more flexibility, feel free to use them separately.

To use this font in your CSS, you could add a mixin like in this real world example. You can also generate your CSS automatically with gulp-iconfont-scss.

You may also want to hint your TTF fonts, you can use gulp-spawn, gulp-filter and ttfautohint for that matter. First install ttfautohint (use at least the 0.93 version), then, in your gulpfile:

var ttfFilter = filter('*.ttf');

  gulp.src(['assets/icons/*.svg'])
  .pipe(iconfont(/* ... */))
  .pipe(ttfFilter)
  .pipe(spawn({
    cmd: '/bin/sh',
    args: [
      '-c',
      'cat | ttfautohint /dev/stdin /dev/stdout | cat'
    ]
  }))
  .pipe(ttfFilter.restore())
  .pipe(gulp.dest('www/fonts/'))

API

iconfont(options)

options.fontName

Type: String Default value: 'iconfont'

A string value that is used to name your font-family (required).

options.fixedWidth

Type: Boolean Default value: false

Creates a monospace font of the width of the largest input icon.

options.fontHeight

Type: Number

The ouputted font height (defaults to the height of the highest input icon).

options.descent

Type: Number Default value: 0

The font descent. It is usefull to fix the font baseline yourself.

The ascent formula is : ascent = fontHeight - descent.

options.appendCodepoints

Type: Boolean Default value: false

Allow to append codepoints to icon files in order to always keep the same codepoints.

Preparing SVG's

Beware that your SVG icons must have a high enough height. 500 is a minimum. If you do not want to resize them, you can try to combine the fontHeight and the normalize option to get them in a correct size.

Inkscape

Degroup every shapes (Ctrl+Shift+G), convert to pathes (Ctrl+Maj+C) and merge them (Ctrl++). Then save you SVG, prefer 'simple SVG' file type.

Illustrator

Save your file as SVG with the following settings:

• SVG Profiles: SVG 1.1
• Fonts Type: SVG
• Fonts Subsetting: None
• Options Image Location: Embed
• Advanced Options
  • CSS Properties: Presentation Attributes
  • Decimal Places: 1
  • Encoding: UTF-8
  • Output fewer elements: check

Leave the rest unchecked.

More in-depth information: http://www.adobe.com/inspire/2013/09/exporting-svg-illustrator.html