Export font glyphs as SVG
Turn specific characters into standalone SVG files, one per glyph, using the font's own bézier outlines, normalised to a 1000-unit em so files from different fonts are comparably sized.
Export font glyphs as SVG turns each character you list into its own standalone SVG file, tracing the font's outlines rather than a bitmap. Each exported glyph sits inside a shared 1000-unit em box, keeping output from different fonts at a matching scale. Characters the font lacks are skipped and named in a summary line; listing none is refused.
Questions
How is each character exported?
As its own standalone SVG file, one per requested character, named glyph-U+XXXX.svg using its Unicode code point in hex. Each file contains a single path element built from the font's own bezier outlines.
What happens to characters the font does not have?
They are skipped and listed by name in a summary line rather than causing the whole run to fail, as long as at least one requested character does exist in the font.
What if none of the requested characters exist in the font?
The tool refuses, naming the characters you asked for and the total number of glyphs the font covers, so you know how far off the request was.
Why are the glyphs normalized to 1000 units?
So that glyphs exported from different fonts, which can use different unitsPerEm values internally, come out at comparable proportions rather than one font's output being twice the size of another's for the same nominal character.
What if I leave the chars option empty?
It refuses with a message naming the tool and file, saying chars is empty and to list at least one character.
Compare
| Tool | Runs on the CLI | Live as you type |
|---|---|---|
| Export font glyphs as SVG | Yes | No |
| Convert a font to OTF | Yes | No |
| Subset a font to specific characters | Yes | No |
| Render a font specimen sheet | Yes | No |
| Convert text to an SVG path | Yes | No |
| Embed a font as a CSS data URI | Yes | No |
| Turn an icon font into an SVG sprite | Yes | No |