fontpatching.rst

Font patching

Powerline provides a font patcher for custom glyphs like the segment dividers (arrows), branch symbol, padlock symbol, etc. The font patcher requires FontForge with Python bindings to work.

You may be able to avoid patching your coding font to use the custom glyphs! See :ref:`font-installation` for instructions.

Check out the powerline-fonts repository on GitHub for patched versions of some popular programming fonts.

Warning

The code points have changed in this version of Powerline! This means that you either have to patch your font again, or change the glyphs Powerline uses in your user configuration.

Note

Powerline no longer works with rxvt-unicode unless you either use rxvt-unicode compiled with --enable-unicode3, or you use fonts patched with the legacy font patcher and change the glyphs in your user configuration.

Glyph table

Powerline stores all special glyphs in the Unicode Private Use Area (U+E000-U+F8FF).

Code point	Glyph	Description
U+E0A0		Version control branch
U+E0A1		LN (line) symbol
U+E0A2		Closed padlock
U+E0B0		Rightwards black arrowhead
U+E0B1		Rightwards arrowhead
U+E0B2		Leftwards black arrowhead
U+E0B3		Leftwards arrowhead

Usage

The font patcher is located at :file:`powerline/fontpatcher/fontpatcher.py`. It requires Python 2.7 and FontForge compiled with Python bindings to work.

Patched fonts are renamed by default (" for Powerline" is added to the font name) so they don't conflict with existing fonts. Use the --no-rename option to disable font renaming.

Note

Bitmap fonts are not supported, and will probably never be supported officially due to difficulty creating a font patcher that works for bitmap fonts. The recommended method of patching bitmap fonts is to draw the glyphs manually using a tool like gbdfed.

Linux

1. Install fontforge with Python bindings. For Ubuntu users the required package is python-fontforge, for Arch Linux users the required package is fontforge. It should be something similar for other distros.

2. Run the font patcher:

   $ /path/to/fontpatcher.py MyFontFile.ttf
   

3. Copy the font file into :file:`~/.fonts` (or another X font directory):

   $ cp "MyFontFile for Powerline.otf" ~/.fonts
   

4. Update your font cache:

   $ fc-cache -vf ~/.fonts
   

   If you're using vim in a terminal you may need to close all open terminal windows after updating the font cache.

5. Gvim users: Update the GUI font in your :file:`vimrc` file:

   set guifont=MyFont\ for\ Powerline
   

   Terminal users: Update your terminal configuration to use the patched font.

6. Open vim and enjoy your new statusline!

OS X

1. Check if you have a FontForge version with Python support by running fontforge -version. You should see something like this:

   $ fontforge -version
   Copyright (c) 2000-2011 by George Williams.
   Executable based on sources from 13:48 GMT 22-Feb-2011-D.
   Library based on sources from 13:48 GMT 22-Feb-2011.
   fontforge 20110222
   libfontforge 20110222
   

   Make sure that the executable version number doesn't have NoPython in it. If everything looks OK, skip ahead to step 4.

2. If you have FontForge but with NoPython in the version number, please try to update to a later version:

   $ brew uninstall fontforge
   $ brew update
   $ brew install fontforge
   

   Note: You may have to use --use-clang instead of --use-gcc when compiling FontForge.

3. If you don't have FontForge, install it with Homebrew:

   $ brew update
   $ brew install fontforge
   

4. Patch your fonts by passing the fontpatcher script as a parameter to FontForge:

   $ fontforge -script /path/to/fontpatcher.py MyFontFile.ttf
   

5. Install the font by double-clicking the font file in Finder and click "Install this font" from the preview window.

6. Gvim users: Update the GUI font in your :file:`vimrc` file:

   set guifont=MyFont\ for\ Powerline
   

   Terminal users: Update your terminal configuration to use the patched font.

7. Open vim and enjoy your new statusline!