We are pleased to announce that preview builds of FontLab VI are now open to the public! No nondisclosure agreement needed.

See the main FontLab VI page to learn all about the app, preview features, and download a pre-release build to try it yourself!

Check the public FontLab VI forum to discuss features, interface and implementation, and report bugs to our eagerly waiting team.

What is FontLab VI?

FontLab VI is our attempt to make the world’s best font creation and editing tool. We hope you find it so by the time it is done. It has been years in the making. It represents a complete overhaul of the former FontLab Studio program, most of the code rewritten from scratch, with an entirely new user interface, but with a few core functions based on tested and reliable engines. As an example, while the font generation engine is newish, an earlier version shipped with TransType 4. Overall, there are enough new features that we could reasonably have skipped a version number or even two.

Wait, so you’re shipping FontLab VI and it is free?

No. We are making early pre-release builds available for free. The final product will be a commercial release, with upgrade pricing available for previous users of any of our font editors, as well as educational prices for students and teachers.

What does “Preview” mean? What is the state of FontLab VI?

This Preview is neither feature-complete, nor stable enough for serious production use as your primary font editor. It still has major bugs and issues, many of which we haven’t even discovered yet. That is part of why we are making it available; we want broad user input from many people, not only to help find bugs, but also to give us feedback on how the app works and user interface decisions.

Known major issues:

• Manual TrueType hinting is not yet implemented. (We do have TTFautohint integration, however.)
• Multiple master (axis-based, interpolation/extrapolation, MutatorMath) font support is just being integrated now, so expect it to have many issues as it gets developed.
• Documentation is still under development, but has some useful info on a few features, and also a full list of keyboard shortcuts.
• Python scripting has not had much testing—expect more bugs than elsewhere. Also, the APIs are undocumented. Our ultimate intention is to support both classic FontLab Python scripts with minimal-if-any changes, and also RoboFab-based scripts.

When will FontLab VI ship for real?

We will ship it when it is ready. What is “ready”? The application needs to not be missing any major features that were in FontLab Studio 5. It needs to be stable—without a bunch of crippling bugs. The interface needs to be polished and not be too confusing for people just getting started with FontLab VI, whether they are veteran type designers or new users. Documentation needs to be in a reasonable state. All that remains to be done. So, we are not promising a date, but please know that we are all working very hard on FontLab VI. We want to ship it at least as much as you want to see it!

FontLab VI Public Preview Available by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

It’s webinar time! We hit max capacity of 200 registrants last time we did this webinar, and we want a better recording of it, so we are repeating it! (Already at 90 registrants from email announcement.)

UPDATE: recording of this webinar available on YouTube.

How to Space Your Fonts
with Thomas Phinney
Tuesday 3 November 2015
9:00 am Pacific / noon Eastern / 18.00 CEST
FREE
Register now

Learn how to set sidebearings and widths for ideal spacing of your fonts, for body text or display. Learn the simple principles and tricks that allow you to quickly get reasonably good spacing from the beginning. What is the relationship between space needed for straight-edged and round-edged letters? How wide should the glyph for the space character be? What compensations are needed for italics? How does the font weight change the ideal spacing? Thomas will cover all this and more!

This webinar will use FontLab Studio 5, but the general principles apply to all font editors, including Fontographer and TypeTool.

There will also be a live Q&A Session at the end of the webinar where you can ask Thomas your tough spacing questions!

Thomas Phinney is a type designer, educator, and font geek who used FontLab for 20 years before joining the company in 2014, and becoming President earlier this month. Previously he worked at Extensis (web fonts and font management tools) and Adobe (as product manager for global fonts and typography). Thomas teaches typeface design with Crafting Type and has been a repeat guest lecturer for MA Typeface Design at the University of Reading. He is also treasurer of ATypI, the international typography association. His typeface Hypatia Sans is an Adobe Original with over 3000 glyphs per font.

There are a limited number of seats available for this webinar, so don’t be disappointed: Register now

“How to Space Your Fonts” free FontLab Phinney webinar redux by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

We have officially approved the most recent v5714 builds of FontLab Studio 5 for general release: these will be the official 5.1.5 Mac and 5.2.2 Windows releases. Compared to the previous 5.1.4 / 5.2.1 releases, this fixes 40 bugs, including 24 bugs present on both platforms, 7 Mac-only issues, and 9 Windows-only issues.

We strongly recommend the new versions for all 5.1 / 5.2 users. We also suggest them for 5.0.x users; although there are a few bugs introduced in 5.1 / 5.2 that are not yet fixed, overall we think these versions are better than 5.0.4 and earlier.

Mac users, please read the release notes for install details as well! Then download:

• FontLab Studio 5.1.5 (5714) for Mac OS X
• FontLab Studio 5.2.2 (5714) for Windows

Mac Install Info

Unfortunately, due to some technical issues, the Mac installer and app are not “code-signed,” so Mac OS X sees it as coming from an “unidentified developer.” We realize this is not ideal, but we thought it would still be better to give you these bug fixes than to sit on the installer until we sort out the install issue. Thanks for understanding.

FontLab Studio Mac now has a user interface localized in seven languages! No longer just English—also French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese. You can also override the automatic language selection to get a different UI language.

To launch the Mac installer (and the app) the first time, please:

• Right-click (Ctrl-click) on the installer (or the installed application) in the Finder and choose “Open.”
• Click on “Open” in the dialog box that appears.
• You’ll only need to do this once to install, and once again on the app. After this it will just launch normally.

Windows Install Info & Python

(Updated 14 March 2016)
Since the release of 5.2.2 for Windows, we have encountered an compatibility issue with the newest Python 2.X, version 2.7.11. Version 5.2.2 will not launch with this version of Python installed, without extra measures. There are two possible solutions, below. (Note: you do not need Python installed at all to run FontLab Studio 5; it is just that if you do have it installed, this can be an issue.)

• Note that it must be a 32-bit version of Python installed. FontLab Studio 5 will not work with a 64-bit Python. (32-bit Python will run fine on a 64-bit version of Windows.
• One option is to install Python 2.7.10 instead.
• The other option is to do the following steps, to edit the environment variables via the System Properties dialog:
• Windows Key + X
• System
• Advanced system settings
• Environment Variables…
• and add a PYTHONHOME variable with value of “C:\Python27”

Changes & Bug Fixes in 5.1.5 / 5.2.2

There was one major code change. When generating OTF fonts, we no longer use the Adobe AFDKO code to generate the name table and OS/2 table; instead we rely on FontLab’s own code, which was already being used for these tables in TTFs. This change yields more consistent results between TTF and OTF, ensuring user-defined info shows up in the font regardless of format, and avoids surprise default results that are not visible in the FontLab interface.

Also, “language” lists were updated in “Additional OpenType names” tab of Font Info for Windows and Macintosh platforms in accordance with http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/name.htm.

Bugs which were both introduced and fixed during the development of this release are not listed.

Special thanks to Lucas de Groot for reporting at least 20 of the bugs we fixed.

Mac & Win dual-platform bugs

1. The Preview panel doesn’t update when you browse through fonts in Font Info (worked in 5.0.4)
2. Generating Unicodes using a .nam file fails on last glyph in font
3. Underscore char not supported in the Family Name
4. Component numbering display bug
5. Generate Instance causes PFM Default Character field in Font Info to become empty
6. Pasting from MM to single master glyph pastes all masters, not just the active layer
7. [FATAL] Compiling Verdana Regular GPOS ‘kern’ feature fails (worked in 5.0.4)
8. Underline and strikeout positions (and thickness) are changed on export to OTF
9. CFF subroutinization nesting problem can cause glyph rendering problems in some fonts
10. Disappearing outlines in one master of MM fonts
11. Wrong tooltips in TT Hinting Options > Zones, and top zone can’t be changed after being set
12. Metrics Window contextual menu issues
13. Blue class kerning indicators not visible in Kerning Table of Metrics Window
14. Metrics undo is applied only to the base component of composite glyphs
15. “Digital signature” and “Trace Options” sections disappear from “Preferences” (Options) dialog after performing “Reset
16. options to defaults” command
17. Slanting in the Actions dialog does not work with decimals (fractional values)
18. OTF only: export of “name” table loses non-ASCII characters, OS/2 table inserts default values for blanks,
19. Add -Regular in auto-generated PS FontName and Full Name
20. Using tab key between Metrics windows fields disables further glyph editing afterwards
21. Pasting from EPS scales inconsistently
22. Component shift doesn’t work in Generate Glyphs dialog
23. Trying to generate a font containing 65536 glyphs causes lock up instead of warning
24. Hidden classes sometimes get deleted during re-ordering

Mac-only issues

1. Font create date not editable and auto-set to current date/time in OS X 10.9+
2. Printing fails on OS X 10.9+ (Out of memory error)
3. Copy Font Info dialog: missing Select All/None buttons
4. Underscore and digits are not allowed in PostScript Name
5. Menus disappear if user chooses a Workspace with a non-ASCII character; app must be restarted with Control pressed to fix
6. Wrong Type 1 hinting rasterizers in Hinting Preview
7. Applying any saved workspace using the Window>Workspace menu shifts all toolbars

Windows-only issues

1. Customized vertical global guideline colors lost when .vfb is saved and reopened
2. Temporary files are not deleted when font generation fails (causes font generation problems afterwards)
3. Typing very long Metrics preview strings can cause crash
4. Transformation “Mirror” buttons require two clicks
5. Menu shortcuts do not work when the mouse cursor is above a beveled button in a panel
6. Switching between masters using keyboard shortcut doesn’t update Masters and Axis panels
7. The Meter panel doesn’t stick around when you close and open glyphs
8. Bold effect in the Actions dialog rounds corners even when rounding option is off
9. Distance/angle in the Meter panel doesn’t show info

FontLab Studio 5 updates: 5.1.5 Mac & 5.2.2 Win by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

FontLab Studio 5.1.5 Mac is newly localized into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese!

The app makes its choice of which language to display the interface in based on your system preferences:

There is a workaround to force FontLab to work in a different language regardless of your language preferences: open the application package, and delete the folders for the languages that are higher in your prefs list than the one you want FontLab to use. The folders have names such as “Spanish.lproj”.

FontLab Studio Mac now in 7 languages by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

The free live webinar maxed out with 200 registrants—twice! So we made a good recording to share with everyone. Check it out!

Learn how to set sidebearings and widths for ideal spacing of your fonts, for body text or display. Learn the simple principles and tricks that allow you to quickly get reasonably good spacing from the beginning. What is the relationship between space needed for straight-edged and round-edged letters? How wide should the glyph for the space character be? What is the secret formula for the left-shift compensation needed for italics? How does increasing font weight change the ideal spacing? How can you set sidebearings for a bunch of glyphs as quickly as possible in FontLab Studio? How can you measure and ignore serifs? I cover all these things in the video, plus a Q&A Session at the end where people ask questions.

Most important addendum to the video: spacing is something you should address continuously during the design process, not as an afterthought at the end. Kerning, on the other hand, is best left as late as humanly possible.

The demos use FontLab Studio 5, but the general principles apply to all font editors, including Fontographer and TypeTool.

“How to Space Your Fonts” free YouTube video by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

UPDATE: This sale was Nov 31 – Dec 1, 2015. Sorry you missed it!

Yes, as a Cyber Monday special, we just marked down our flagship program, FontLab Studio 5. Regular price is US $649, now $324.50. Student/teacher pricing is also halved: regular US $325, now $162.50. Upgrades to FLS 5 from older/other FontLab products are also half price!

Plus, effective immediately, all new permanent licenses of FontLab Studio 5 from now until we ship FontLab VI will qualify for a free upgrade to FontLab VI when it ships next year! Yes, that includes upgrades and academic orders.

Most of the world’s commercial fonts were created with FontLab Studio, so you know it is the industry-standard type design and font editing tool used worldwide.

See All Sale Items

Small print: Half off applies to FontLab Studio 5 by itself, including upgrades and individual academic/educational orders. Sale price does not apply to FontLab Studio bundles with other applications, nor to bulk licensing for schools and organizations. Free upgrade to FontLab VI does not apply to one-year licenses, but does apply to upgrades and permanent academic licenses, including bulk licensing for schools and organizations.

FontLab Studio 1/2 price + free VI upgrade Cyber Monday sale! by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

We’ve just posted a FontLab VI update, Public Preview 2 (build 5844) for Mac, because the initial public preview just expired on December 31st, 2015. We still don’t call this a “beta”; that would imply being feature complete and fairly stable. We are not there yet!

We are also hard at work on a Windows version of the app.

Read this for general information about the Public Preview.

NOTE: Public Preview 2 does not run on OS X 10.6.8 or earlier.

Ways to get the new Public Preview 2 (5844) build:

• You can sign up for the Public Preview on the main FontLab VI page, and that will automatically send you an email with a link to the new Preview 2 download. Yes, this will work even if you already signed up before.
• We were too late to allow you to use the auto-update mechanism, as Public Preview 1 app activation has expired. For future updates, we are changing it so that in the future it will check for updates before checking for expiry, but that was not the case for Preview 1.
• If you already signed up for the Public Preview previously, you should have gotten an email with a new download link.

I should explain that while a few bugs are fixed, for the most part we have been focused on some major architecture changes that needed doing. Not all of these are done, and some of them are initially being done on a separate branch from the version of the app you will be getting.

Why not focus on bugs first? These big changes can be the cause of still more bugs, or have long-reaching ripples in the code. So we are focused on making such changes right away, instead of later. This means fewer bug fixes and visible new features right now, however.

What’s New?

Here are the big things that we have been working on, some of which are in the build you are getting:

• All anti-aliased on-screen drawing is being changed to use OpenGL. Currently this is off by default, because it isn’t working well on our Windows build, and may still have bugs. It can be turned on in Preferences > General. When enabled, it will mean that drawing now uses graphics co-processors when available on your computer, with a major boost in drawing performance, especially on extremely complex shapes. (If your computer does not have a dedicated graphics card, you will see minimal speed improvement.)
• The new FontLab native VFC file format is done, but not yet well tested. You may additionally set FontLab to automatically save in one or more of UFO, VFB, or XFO.
• In the Preferences / General section, you can disable the option Open new windows as tabs. With this option disabled, after you restart FontLab VI, all new windows (Font Window, Glyphs Window, Metrics Window) will open as separate windows, creating the experience more familiar to FontLab Studio 5 users.
• Adding a crash-reporting system! Still need to add an opt-out option and a screen shot option to this. Not sure it is in the new build.
• The internal messaging system that app uses to communicate between its different parts is being rewritten.

FontLab VI Public Preview 2 for Mac by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Better Glyph Point Placement for Better Fonts
with Thomas Phinney
Tuesday 9 February 2016
9:00 am Pacific / noon Eastern / 18.00 CEST
FREE Live Webinar
Register now

Learn how to construct better outlines for fonts, and why it matters.
Make your fonts render quicker and better on screen, and your glyphs easier to edit.
Discover why so many designers think they have points at extrema when they don’t.

Note: to submit a font for live feedback during the webinar, write to “info” at the obvious domain (fontlab.com).

Webinar Agenda

• Why outlines matter
• What to do
• Issues
• Tools for Better Outlines
• LIVE feedback and example outline corrections on several real users’ fonts
• Q&A

About Thomas

Thomas Phinney is a type designer, educator, and font geek who used FontLab for 20 years before joining FontLab in 2014, and becoming President in 2015. Previously he worked at Extensis (web fonts and font management tools) and Adobe (product manager for global fonts and typography). Thomas teaches typeface design with Crafting Type, and has been a repeat guest lecturer for MA Typeface Design at the University of Reading. He is also secretary of ATypI, the international typography association. His typeface Hypatia Sans is an Adobe Original with over 3000 glyphs per font.

There are a limited number of seats available for this webinar, so don’t be disappointed: Register now

Better font outline construction free FontLab webinar by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Dutch Type Library / URW++ release OTMaster 6,
available now at FontLab,
25% off until June 1st

OTMaster is the ultimate tool for examining final output fonts and tweaking them, without bringing them through a full-on font editor.

BUY NOW—sale ends June 1st, 2016

• Full version: USD $279 $209
• Academic (student or teacher): USD $139.50 $104.62
• Upgrade: $54.71
• Free Upgrade if you purchased version 5 in 2016!

About OTMaster

OTMaster font view

DTL OTMaster (OTM) is the sophisticated application for opening, reviewing, editing and storing glyphs and tables of font formats that use the sfnt container: TTF (TrueType/OpenType), OTF (OpenType with PostScript CFF outlines) and TTC (TrueType Collection), including all the competing color font variants.

Regular font editors, such as FontLab Studio, Fontographer, TypeTool and the DTL FontMaster (FM) suite, use their own internal data formats during design and production. From these files, binary fonts for the end-user (TTF, OTF, etc.) are compiled as the very last step in the font production process.

OTMaster is a tool for inspecting and adjusting such binary fonts, regardless of the font editor used to create them. OTM gives a graphical user interface for editing tables, and comes with a built-in Glyph Editor for proofing and editing contours, or even drawing glyphs from scratch. A ‘kern’ Table Viewer is available for proofing and refining the kerning, and a ‘GSUB’/’GPOS’ Viewer to visually test and adjust these OpenType Layout tables. DTL OTMaster is available for Mac OS X (10.7 Lion and newer), Windows (Windows XP and newer), and the major Linux distributions.

What’s New?

OTMaster glyph viewer

New in version 6.3.0 compared to 5.x:

• Support for Retina displays
• Opens TTC made by AFDKO
• Open & export WOFF and WOFF2 font formats
• Glyph editor has more tools
• OTM Text Viewer supports metrics editing
• Tool icon size can be changed (in preferences)
• Bug that resulted in mislabeling ‘hhea’ table-field names has been fixed
• Bug that resulted in disordered display in the OTM Feature Selector has been fixed

OTMaster table viewer/editor

OTMaster 6 now available, 1/4 off! by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

We have a new Public Preview (5926) available!

Download the new Public Preview (5962) build:

• If you have a public preview build from within the last month, just launch it, and use the built-in auto-update feature. This should work even after the build expires at the end of the month.
• Otherwise, you can sign up for the Public Preview on the main FontLab VI page, and that will automatically send you an email with a link to the newest Public Preview download. Yes, this will work even if you already signed up before.

Discuss and post bug reports in our user forum.

We still don’t call this a “beta”; that would imply being feature complete and fairly stable. Although we are not there yet, stability and usability continue to improve.

We are also hard at work on a Windows version of the app. Maybe you will see a Public Preview in May.

Read this for general information about the Public Preview builds and process.

NOTE: Current builds of FontLab VI are expected to run on OS X 10.7 and later. They do not run on 10.6.8 and earlier.

What’s New?

Compared to last Public Preview a month ago
(list compiled by Adam)

General UI

• (new) context menus (right-click or Ctrl+click) are now implemented in Glyph window and Font window
• (new) Preferences / Editing / High contrast mode increases the visual contrast of UI elements within the Glyph window area

Shapes

• (new) Gallery panel lists all named shapes in the font and allows you to easily place them into the currently active Layer via the Place button inside the panel, or via drag-and-drop. This works in the Glyph and Font window. If you create or choose a shape in the Glyph window, and then give it a name using the Shapes panel, then the shape will be added to the Gallery panel for easy reuse in other glyphs.

Glyph access (improved) Glyph access methods in Font and Glyph window work better with the keyboard and have new keyboard shortcuts:

• use the / key to go to a glyph via its glyph name
• use the # key to go to a glyph via its Unicode
• use Cmd+F (Edit / Find Glyphs…) in Glyph Window to insert one or more specific glyphs via various criteria, and in Font Window to go to or select specific glyphs
• use Shift+Cmd+F to jump to the Search box in Font Window to search the font for specific results and filter the window to the results, or in Glyph Window to insert the results
• use Cmd+L (Edit / List Related Glyphs…) to go to glyphs that are related to the current selection

(new) All Glyphs toggle button in Font Window’s History sidebar (left sidebar) lets you control how the Font Window filtering works when you select an Encoding, use the Search box, Search History or Bookmarks. If on (default), filtered glyph cells are displayed in the “yellow area” at the top while the rest of the glyph cells follow, just like in FontLab Studio 5. If off, only the filtered glyph cells are displayed while the rest are hidden.

Glyph design

• (new) View / Apply Italic Angle (\ key) changes the behavior of sidebearings, vertical grid and the vertical point movement in italic fonts. When you have a non-zero italic angle (in Windows / Font Info panel, / Angle), tap on the \ key to toggle between three states:
  • Tap \ once to display slanted sidebearings. The sidebearings angle corresponds to the italic angle, and the italic correction corresponds to the Caret Offset setting in Font Info. This also affects some sidebearing values displayed in the UI (it needs improvement)
  • Tap \ again to also slant grid. In this state, when you use Shift* key to move points or other objects “vertically” using mouse or keyboard, the movement will happen along the italic angle axis, not vertically.
  • Tap \ again to “straighten” both the sidebearings and the grid.

• (improved) In Glyph window, arrow keys move points and other objects by 1 font unit. with Ctrl, they move by 0.1 unit, with Shift by 10 units, with Cmd by 100 units. The basic and Shift distances can be modified in Preferences / Distances
• changed: with Guides tool, use Ctrl+click to add a glyph Anchor, use Alt+click to add a shape Pin (#207, thanks Lucas)
• (improved) positioning within glyphs created via Generate Glyphs now respects matching named anchors such as “top/_top” (#68)

Import, Export, Technology

• (new) confirmation dialog shows the location of exported fonts after File / Export Fonts (#255)
• (changed) Preferences / Curve Conversion / Create short curves now only affects explicit curve conversion initiated by the user. New Preferences / Open Fonts / Break long TrueType curves to short segments setting controls the same behavior when fonts are opened.
• (updated) built-in ttfautohint and HarfBuzz are now updated to the April 2016 versions

Other improvements

• (fixed) Destination dropdown menu now works in Fonts panel (#314)
• (fixed) Remove shape button in the Shapes panel now works (#319)
• (fixed) Artwork placed into Sketchboard is now visible (#262)
• (fixed) clicking when Ctrl+Space is pressed now zooms in (#263, thanks Lucas)
• (fixed) Copied contours are pasted vertically mirrored in the Sketchboard. The size is of the pasted image is 10 times bigger. (#331)
• (fixed) Redraw issues on curvature comb (#183)
• (fixed) crash when copy-pasting glyphs from FontLab Studio 5 to FontLab VI
• (fixed) Guides tool now snaps to outlines when measuring (#207, thanks Lucas)
• (fixed) Undo now works for anchor operations (#315)
• (fixed) Detect Clones multiplied shapes (#340)
• (fixed) crash on Crop Image (#338)
• (fixed) Flag color is now applied on Glyph window close (#246)
• (fixed) Magnet tool leaves painting artefacts (#269, thanks Lucas)
• (fixed) import Adobe Illustrator EPS via Import / Artwork (#171)
• (improved) adding new layers in Layers panel (#204)
• (fixed) moving guidelines with the Contour tool (#247)
• (fixed) hang on color palette in the Shapes panel (#286)
• (fixed) Open Sketchboard now always activates Sketchboard (#304)
• (fixed) glyph renaming in Glyph panel (#303)
• (fixed) crash on second Export Fonts As operation (#295)
• (fixed) preview was missing in Actions dialog after Undo (#272)
• (fixed) Layers panel now allows renaming a layer (#280)
• (fixed) bbox problems with bitmaps created via rasterized Layers (#278)
• (fixed) kerning is now imported from Mac Type 1 suitcases (#305)
• (fixed) crash on Undo for Scissors tool (#307)
• (fixed) various Font Window and Glyph Window refresh/redraw problems
• (fixed) Undo now works after Combine to Shape (#339)

And numerous other minor fixes and improvements!

P.S. The #xxx numbers in the release notes are internal FontLab issue tracker numbers.

New FontLab VI Public Preview for Mac download by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Moments ago, at the ATypI conference in Warsaw, representatives from Google, Microsoft, Apple and Adobe unveiled version 1.8 of the OpenType specification, featuring a surprise in the form of variable fonts (a.k.a. OpenType Variations). This is an extension and updating of the 1990s GX Variations technology invented by Apple, and a functional superset of Adobe’s Multiple Master technology.

Links which should all be live shortly if they are not already:

• OpenType 1.8 specification
• The formal group announcement on Medium, written by John Hudson.
• Adobe’s announcement
• Google’s announcement

The variable fonts enabled by this technology will offer more freedom to type designers and font users, and smaller file sizes for packaging font families. Type designers can enable one or more axes of variation, such as weight, width, or optical size. These can be done with true typographic finesse—we’re not talking artificial stretching and automatic algorithms.

FontLab has already recently begun work on integrating support for variable OpenType fonts in FontLab VI. Indeed, sharp-eyed users of the most recent FontLab VI Public Preview builds may note that they already contain a “Variations” panel, which already features some of the key flexibilities allowed by variable fonts but not in, say, Multiple Master: masters at any point in the design space, and potentially many more design axes. FontLab VI will ship with some degree of OpenType Variations support, and we will continue work on OpenType Variations afterwards, both for FontLab VI and other products.

Variations panel prototype from FontLab VI (build 6101)

Long-time type industry watchers might be aware that FontLab was the first font editor to offer designers a full visual environment for working with Adobe’s Multiple Master technology. I did my own Master’s thesis in this area, and FontLab’s Adam Twardoch has been suggesting for several years, to anyone who would listen, how it wouldn’t be hard to add GX Variations to OpenType.

So needless to say, the FontLab team is very excited to see the unveiling of this new technology, and is fully supportive of this announcement. I have already written an article for Communication Arts magazine about OpenType Variations and what it means for designers, and next week I will be talking about it at the WebVisions conference in Chicago. You can already see the seeds in our latest FontLab VI Public Preview, and there is more to come!

FontLab plans for new OpenType 1.8 variable fonts by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Just a quick note to say that we have done spot testing of our current Mac apps with macOS 10.12 Sierra, and we have seen no new issues so far. We have also had no bug reports from users so far that turned out to be Sierra specific, either. So as far as we can tell, there are no such issues!

macOS 10.12 Sierra & FontLab products by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Windows users, your font editor of tomorrow is nearly ready! For all you Windows users who have been patiently waiting for something new and better than FontLab Studio 5, there is now a Windows version of the free FontLab VI Public Preview. (Plus an updated Mac Public Preview.)

Visit fontlab.com/vi, learn about the features, register and download FontLab VI Public Preview for Windows now! Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, you can use its current full functionality. The current build will expire by the end of the month, but you will be notified of a new Public Preview build via the built-in auto-update system. FontLab VI Public Preview will remain free until we ship the final app!

What’s FontLab VI?

FontLab VI is our next-generation professional font editor, crafted for type designers and font geeks. Five years in the making, we’re still putting finishing touches on it. It’s a massive upgrade over FontLab Studio 5, and remains the only true cross-platform type design and font creation app. With FontLab VI, you get the same high performance, clean user interface, and innovative font making tools on Mac OS X and Windows.

What’s new in FontLab VI?

Seasoned FontLab Studio 5 users will find lots of familiar elements in FontLab VI, but we’ve carefully upgraded and polished each of them. The new Font Window allows for visual sorting, smart searching and filtering, and provides a table view that exposes lots of numerical glyph data. We’ve unified the Glyph Window and Metrics Window so you can access the Metrics and Kerning tools right from the main app toolbar. We’ve renamed the Class panel into the Groups panel, but it remains the home for Kerning and OpenType groups.

In place of the limited Components, FontLab VI introduces Cloned Shapes that keep bidirectional live links between contours that appear in different glyphs. FontLab VI still has the View, Transform, OpenType Features and Python Scripting panels, but we’ve redesigned each of those functions so you can achieve your goals faster.

FontLab VI also brings a lot of brand-new functionality. You can automatically Create Overlaps and even attach TrueType Hinting commands to PostScript outlines. You can scale your contours up and down or slant them back and forth losslessly thanks to FontLab VI’s internal fractional coordinate system. We’ve invented new contour design tools: the superfast Rapid drawing tool, Tunni Lines and Genius points for better curvature control; the Fill tool that lets you forget about path direction and allows you to simply turn contours or intersection areas black or white; the Power Brush for quick prototyping of calligraphic strokes; and the awesome Power Nudge mode that lets you typographically correctly condense, expand or transform your contours in a fraction of the time.

FontLab VI supports all of Unicode 9, including color emoji, and all of OpenType 1.8, including Arabic or Indic shaping as well as color and variable OpenType fonts. Speaking of variable fonts: in this build, you cannot yet generate them, but you can open them, and you can set up an unlimited number of font-wide or per-glyph Masters in a MutatorMath- and OpenType Variations-compatible design space, which is backwards-compatible with FontLab Studio 5’s Multiple Master model but much more flexible.

FontLab VI has unlimited glyphs, unlimited layers, multi-line multi-glyph editing, full color support, tag-based multi-glyph guides and zones, Anchor-based mark attachment, complex metrics linking via expressions, and the list goes on and on. And you can convert between various font formats, including .ttf, .otf, .vfb, .ufo, .glyphs, and all the color OpenType fonts such as OpenType+SVG.

What’s the Public Preview for Windows?

With the FontLab VI Public Preview, you get the full current functionality for free until we ship the final version. You can create, open, edit and generate fully-functioning OpenType fonts, you can turn your images or Illustrator artwork into fonts, you can do spacing, kerning, hinting. And you can use FontLab VI Public Preview alongside of your other tools such as FontLab Studio 5, Fontographer or RoboFont.

Because we develop FontLab VI on a cross-platform framework, the feature set of the Public Preview for Windows is practically identical to the established Mac version, and we expect only a few platform-specific bugs, likely largely interface-related (most other bugs that occur are cross-platform).

The Windows version of FontLab VI is a 32-bit app that runs on both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows XP through to Windows 10. We have specifically tested it on Windows XP, 7 and 10. When we release new builds of the Public Preview, you will be notified via the built-in auto-update mechanism.

Final notes

Please report bugs in our user forum.

Some keyboard shortcuts in the menus are marked with a “Meta” modifier key. They are not accessible. The Mac has three modifier keys: “Ctrl,” “Alt” and “Cmd,” while Windows computers only have two that can be used by app developers: “Ctrl” and “Alt”. We’re working hard on providing sensible keyboard shortcuts for our Windows users, but this will take a while yet!

Free FontLab VI Public Preview for Windows by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Effective immediately, TransType 4 for Mac and Windows is on sale for half price for Cyber Monday 2016. Buy now!

• Full: was $97, now $48.50
• Academic Full: was $48, now $24
• Upgrade from version 2 or 3: was $39.95, now $19.97

Convert Mac and Windows fonts, reorganize font families, batch conversion, web fonts, special effects filters, and more! All in an easy-to-use app with a simple interface, so you don’t have to be a font geek to use it. All about TransType 4.

Sale ends Tuesday, November 29, 2016, 8 am PST.

TransType 4 half price sale Cyber Monday! by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

For the latter part of last year, and all this year, we have been expecting and saying that FontLab VI would ship, well, “this year” (2016). But we are not going to make that, as became clear to us earlier this month. Instead, we currently expect to ship in February.

FontLab VI in action (click for full size)

We could have hurried up with the last couple of things and “just shipped it.” But anybody who has used software a long time knows what that will do—FontLab VI just needs more “bake time.” That is, time for us all continue to give it a real workout, doing extensive and ongoing type design tasks, so we can find and fix a bunch more bugs and usability issues before we ship it.

We continue to make prerelease builds available, and even more frequently! Another one just came out on December 15th. If you already have a Public Preview build on Mac or Windows, just launch it and it will prompt you to download and install the newest built. If not, you can register and get emailed a download link from our Preview page. When you find problems in the Public Preview, please report them in our user forum! We appreciate your help and feedback in making this a better app.

FontLab VI, like previous versions, is a very flexible tool that can be used in many ways. That means it has many possible workflows. This is great, but means the app will really benefit from feedback from real-world users trying real-world tasks. Not just us doing things the way we would do them.

We really want to make FontLab VI a great tool for type designers and font friends everywhere. Thanks for your support.

FontLab VI ship update by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Sometimes people make fonts that don’t have letters and such in them, but instead have some kind of symbols.

In many cases such symbols have legitimate encoding slots in the Unicode standard, which is used to dictate encoding for most fonts made today. But working with unusual characters from Unicode can be a bit of a pain. So sometimes people assign unusual symbols to the same slots as A, B, C, etcetera. This is technically wrong, but often convenient.

Here is a quick guide to the options and tradeoffs when creating a symbol or “pi” font. This advice is applicable across all font creation tools, not only ours.

Options:

1. Use “proper” Unicode codepoints for all glyphs in your font. This means looking up correct Unicode codepoints for the symbols.
   • Disadvantage: People won’t be able to type the symbols directly, unless you create custom keyboard drivers for your font. Likely they will need to use a character picker built into their OS or app.
   • Advantages: If they switch fonts to another one that has the right symbols properly encoded, their content will remain correct. Unicode/text purists won’t complain.
2. Use “normal” codepoints for your symbols, so that your symbols are assigned to a, b, c, 1, 2, 3, etc.
   • Disadvantage: If people switch fonts, the symbols will turn into alphabetic gibberish, and it may not even be apparent what was intended. Also, that alphabetic gibberish really is the underlying text, so this approach will confuse screen readers, search, and other things that rely on understanding the text. As a result, it is considered technically “wrong.”
   • Advantage: Can by typed off the keyboard!
3. Use Private Use Area Unicode codepoints. These are codepoints reserved for special purposes, that have no pre-set meaning.
   • Disadvantages: Has all the disadvantages of using proper Unicode, plus most of the disadvantages of of assigning the symbols to alphabetic codepoints
   • Advantage: usually none, unless others have used these PUA codepoints in some consistent way.

How to Choose

Encoding choices for symbolic fonts by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Why do we deprecate or discontinue programs? Sometimes a particular app or utility we offer gets old, and we have no intention of updating it, generally because of lack of customer interest. Discontinued ones we do not promote at all and have no page for. Deprecated ones we have no current intention of updating, but still have a page for.

Mostly, we discontinue: just remove those product pages and discontinue the product entirely. I have done this with a number of things we have offered, such as FOGlamp (it converted Fontographer native files directly to FontLab Studio—newer versions of FontLab Studio just open those old FOG files). In such cases, if you desperately need it for some reason, contact our sales department and they may be able to hook you up.

But sometimes a product has a peculiar combination of attributes:

1. It wasn’t selling enough units that it makes sense for us to update it or make a new version.
2. Some people who want it or need it have no reasonable other alternative. Maybe the competing products don’t have the same features, or are not offered on the same operating systems. Or they just do not exist!

So, we keep web pages live for these programs, because we know a few people really need them. We also label them as deprecated. What does that mean?

• We have no current plans to create a new version of this product. (Some or all functionality from this product might be folded into something else.)
• Support for this app has some limitations. We still try to support it, but if there is a problem that is a known bug… well, there may never be a fix. Our expertise/ability to support it will likely be in a gradual decline.

Mac-specific issues for deprecated apps:

• In some cases (BitFonter, ScanFont), the Mac version of this product no longer runs on any recent MacOS, and our solution for Mac users is to bundle the Windows app in a WINE wrapper. This makes a larger app that is running the Windows version under emulation, on a Mac.
• Generally, the Mac version of the app has not been updated to be “retina savvy.” This means that on any recent Mac hardware with a double-res “retina” monitor, the app will still work, but some elements of the app will run at half that resolution and seem blurry. This can be worked around to some degree by running your Mac in a higher but non-retina screen resolution, but that is a compromise between blur and things getting smaller. If you run at full resolution but non-retina, everything will be very crisp but half-size. A utility such as QuickRes or DisplayMenu can help give you more choices for non-standard Mac resolutions. (Note: Even some of our non-deprecated apps are not retina-savvy. I will have a separate post about this soon.)

Deprecated vs. discontinued by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Do you love helping people & teaching?

Work from wherever you want, whenever you want. One weekly (virtual) meeting. Part-time, paid at an hourly rate.

Apply to: “thomas” at the obvious domain.

This part-time position will handle incoming requests for help using FontLab apps, primarily for FontLab VI—possibly others depending on your background and interests. The VI interface is largely new, and there are many new features. Currently support is primarily by email. This job is ideal for someone who has some experience with FontLab Studio 5 and is learning VI.

There is plenty to be done at FontLab, and an energetic candidate with varied skills and interests will be welcome to do other things too! In fact, given the right candidate, this position could be combined with one or both of our other part-time positions: QA Tester and Documentation Writer.

Requirements:

• Familiarity with a font editing/creation app, preferably some with FontLab VI
• Ability to work independently, “self-starter”
• Sympathy for end users
• Communicate well in written English
• Mac or Windows
  • If Mac, 2560×1600 retina screen (or better) recommended.
  • If Windows, 1920 x 1080 (or better) screen recommended.

Appreciated Bonus Attributes:

• Experience using FontLab VI, currently in Public Preview
• Interest in using FontLab VI as an end user
• Have both Mac and Windows computers
  • or have space to install a Windows “virtual machine” on your Mac hard drive

Primary duties:

• Respond to user inquiries via our support portal and user forums
• Understand user problems with the application; reproduce problems and determine if bugs exist
• If there is a user error or misunderstanding, help the user understand how to better use the software, by explaining things, quoting sections of the user guide, whatever is needed
• Explain features, bugs, and workarounds to users
• File new bugs in bug tracking system, explaining how to reproduce
• Verify whether supposedly fixed bugs are actually fixed
• Point out when existing documentation (or video) is unclear or incomplete

Possibilities for Growth

• Help write and edit FontLab VI documentation
• Create tutorial/educational videos for FontLab VI
• Make product workflow & feature suggestions
• Test and write bugs on TransType and other products
• Depending on timing of hire, might help us migrate to new support system
• You tell us what else you can do!

Job: FontLab Tech Support Engineer (p/t) by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Are you a type tech geek & writer? Get paid to become a FontLab VI guru!

Location: wherever you want to work from, remotely!

Hours: part time, whenever you want. Show up for a weekly virtual meeting.

Apply to: “thomas” at the obvious domain.

The Docs Writer will take a major role, with other staff, in documenting FontLab VI. The interface is largely new, and there are many new features.

There is plenty to be done at FontLab, and an energetic candidate with varied skills and interests will be welcome to do other things too! In fact, given the right candidate, this position could be combined with one or both of our other part-time positions: QA tester and tech support.

Requirements:

• Good written English skills
• Some familiarity with a font editing app, such as FontLab Studio 5, Glyphs, RoboFont or FontForge
• Writing experience (bonus: software documentation or other instructional materials)
• Works well independently, “self starter” (a cliché, we know!), copes well with ambiguity, can help define problems as well as attacking them afterwards
• Mac or Windows computer (Mac preferred)
  • If Mac, 2560 x 1600 retina screen (or better) recommended.
  • If Windows, 1920 x 1080 (or better) screen recommended.

Primary duties:

• Write, edit and expand FontLab VI documentation (considerable portions already written)
• Help change the draft docs to be process-oriented
• Illustrate docs with screen shots as appropriate

Optional Duties / Opportunities for Development

• Create tutorial/educational videos for FontLab VI
• Make product workflow & feature suggestions

Appreciated Bonus Attributes:

• Experience using FontLab VI, currently in Public Preview
• Interest in using FontLab VI outside of paid work
• Experience with other font editing apps
• Familiarity with Markdown (a lightweight formatting language used in both our bug tracker and our docs authoring system)

Job: FontLab Doc Writer (p/t) by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.

Do you love font editing apps?
Already trying FontLab VI?

Work from wherever you want, whenever you want. One weekly (virtual) meeting. Part-time, paid at an hourly rate.

Apply to: “thomas” at the obvious domain.

QA or Quality Assurance is software industry jargon for “testing software so it doesn’t suck.” This part-time position will help test, log and reproduce bugs with FontLab VI, currently in Public Preview. The app has been rebuilt from scratch, the interface is new, and there are many new features—hence many possibilities for bugs. This job is ideal for someone who has some experience with FontLab Studio 5 and is learning VI.

There is plenty to be done at FontLab, and an energetic candidate with varied skills and interests will be given other tasks if they want them! Given the right candidate, this position could be combined with one or both of our other part-time positions: doc writer and tech support.

Requirements:

• Experience using FontLab VI, currently in Public Preview
• Ability to work independently, “self-starter”
• Communicate well in written English
• Mac preferred, as we do screen shots on Mac
  • If Mac, 2560×1600 retina screen (or better) recommended.
  • If Windows, 1920 x 1080 (or better) screen recommended.

Primary duties:

• Create plans for rigorous testing of feature areas
• Test also new features and newly fixed bugs
• Understand and reproduce bugs reported by users
• File new bugs in bug tracking system (ZenHub), explaining how to reproduce
• Verify whether supposedly fixed bugs are actually fixed

Possibilities for Growth

• Help write and edit FontLab VI documentation
• Create tutorial/educational videos for FontLab VI
• Test and write bugs on TransType and other products
• You tell us what else you can do!

Job: FontLab QA tester (p/t) by Thomas Phinney from FontLab Blog.