Inverted glyph: bitmap > SVG via autotrace > glyph via fontforge

Question

I am trying to create a font/glyph by:

• taking a bitmap image
• creating an SVG with autotrace (on Linux)
• importing the outline as a glyph with python-fontforge (glyph.importOutlines(svgfile) )

This works fine except that the resulting glyph in inverted (see images). Any idea how this can be prevented, how the SVG or glyph can be inverted, or anything like that?

Source bitmap:

Autotraced SVG:

Resulting font:

Answer 1

solved this simply by using potrace instead of autotrace.

for reference, these are the steps:

convert bitmap to svg (linux command line):

potrace -s sourceimg.bmp

use svg as glyph (python):

import fontforge
font = fontforge.open('blank.sfd')
glyph = font.createMappedChar('A')
glyph.importOutlines('sourceimg.svg')
font.generate('testfont.ttf')

That's it, result below for use on a website:

css:

@font-face
{
font-family: testfont;
src: url('testfont.ttf');
}

html:

<span style="font-family:testfont; font-weight:normal; color:green;">A</span>
<span style="font-family:testfont; font-weight:bold; color:green;">A</span>

Answer 2

You could try to reverse the path, not sure if there's an option in fontforge that let's you do that, but you can do it with inkscape (Path > Reverse).