Flash can display text in any font you like, and Ming supports that capability.

However, prior to Ming 0.4.0.beta5 fonts need to be in a special format, .FDB.

Current Ming

For TTF and FDB fonts use: 

   1 SWFFont myFont = newSWFFont_fromFile("/path/to/myTTForFDBfile");

Ming version < 0.4.0.beta5

Before using a font (typically in TrueType format, .TTF), we must convert it to .FDB format.

There is no direct TTF-to-FDB converter, but we can go through an intermediate format, FFT.

Installing the utilities

The FDB format font outlines are created using this process:

a) Convert the TTF files to FFT with "ttf2fft" from:

b) Convert the FFT files to FDB format with "makefdb", included in the Ming "utils" folder.

  • At least the one from Ming 0.4.2 is known to work. Other versions of Ming are likely fine too.

Converting a font

  1. Find your TTF file (e.g. myfont.ttf).

  2. Copy it into the directory containing ttf2fft, then: 

./ttf2fft myfont.ttf -o myfont.fft
  1. This will create a .fft file.

  2. Now simply use makefdb to create an FDB file from this, e.g.: 

./makefdb myfont.fft
  1. You now have an .fdb file that can be used by Ming.