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EnglishHow to Get Support or Report Bugs for Birdfont
Updated
Birdfont's official support page lists five channels for help and bug reports: email, Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, and GitHub. For anything reproducible — a crash, a rendering bug, a broken export — GitHub issues is the most useful place to start, because it keeps the report visible and trackable. For quick questions or general help, the social channels and email are the intended routes.
Support channels at a glance
| Channel | Address / link | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| [email protected] | Direct questions, anything you'd rather not post publicly | |
| Mastodon | @[email protected] | Quick questions, following project updates |
| @birdfont | Short questions, announcements | |
| groups/birdfont | Community discussion and peer help | |
| GitHub | birdfont/issues | Bug reports, reproducible problems, feature requests |
All five are listed on the Birdfont site under "Contact, Bugs & Help."
Reporting a bug on GitHub
GitHub issues is where a bug report does the most good, since it stays searchable and the developer can follow up in the thread.
- Go to the Birdfont repository's issues page (
birdfont/issues). - Search existing issues first — the problem may already be reported, and adding your details to an open thread is more useful than opening a duplicate.
- If nothing matches, open a new issue and include:
- Your Birdfont version (see the release notes list on the site — the current line is 6.15).
- Your operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD — these are the platforms with installers and source packages).
- What you did, what you expected, and what actually happened.
- A minimal example if possible: the smallest font file or set of steps that triggers the problem.
- Watch the thread for follow-up questions.
Expected result: your report is visible to the developer and other users, and can be referenced in a future release note if it's fixed.
Before you report
A few checks save a round trip:
- Confirm your version. Birdfont ships frequent point releases (6.10 through 6.15 are all listed in the release notes), and many entries are explicitly bug fixes. If you're on an older build, the bug may already be gone.
- Check the release notes. The notes on the site call out fixes such as "many bug fixes" in 6.13 and 6.9, plus specific fixes in other versions. Scanning them tells you whether your issue is known.
- Try to isolate it. If the problem only appears with one font file or one export format (TTF, OTF, or SVG), say so — that narrows it down considerably.
Getting help rather than reporting a bug
If you're stuck on how to do something rather than hitting a defect, the social channels and the Facebook group are the better fit. The site also points to tutorials and an advanced example covering variable glyph properties, which is worth checking before asking — the answer may already be documented.
Supporting the project
The support page notes that donations and a monthly subscription option exist to fund bug fixes and new features. This is separate from getting help: donating doesn't buy priority support, and none of the support channels require payment. If you want to contribute without money, a clear, well-documented bug report is itself useful to the project.