Typophile - Native Fontographer for Mac OS X now available - Comments

Thanks Adam for your input.

jordy — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 06:17:06 -0800

Thanks Adam for your input. I will do as you suggest and forward my feedback on to you. I certainly appreciate what you are doing and will do in the future with all of your products.

Best
Jordan

> Also don’t like

twardoch — Fri, 9 Dec 2005 18:52:00 -0800

> Also don’t like anti-aliasing turned off
> can it be turned on from the menu?

It was never “on” in Fontographer so it cannot be “turned on”. The procedures used to display glyph images in Fontographer are the same developed back in the 1990s at Macromedia, and they’re entirely different from what you see in the “FontLab family” of products, that is AsiaFont Studio, FontLab Studio, FontLab 4.6 and TypeTool 2 — which are all related.

As we stated numerous times, the goal of Fontographer 4.7 was to make the existing Fontographer Mac OS X-compatible. A few crucial bugfixes were made and the user interface was slightly refereshed but largely, it is the same editor — with all its pros and contras.

We do have plans to release Fontographer 5 in future which will include functional changes and improvements, and we’re gathering feeback for that (see http://www.fontlab.com/Fontographer/Fontographer/Fontographer-Support-an... ). If you want antialiasing, please suggest it there.

Regards,
Adam

Fontographer 4.7 for OS X is

jordy — Fri, 9 Dec 2005 18:33:43 -0800

Fontographer 4.7 for OS X is not very different from 4.1 for OS 9 Classic. I have tried it in the demo form, and find two things wrong. Firstly, the guidelines are black not the grey in 4.1. or green in FL. Second, templates of scanned images placed are also black, not grey as in 4.1. In FontLab the template images are in grey, so why not in Fontographer? Why not have guides in another color in Fontographer as in FontLab? I will most likely be getting FL in the near future along with Scanfont. I’ve used, and continue to use Fontographer as well as TypeTool 2. I’d like to use Fontog in OS X but can’t see it until these problems are corrected. Also don’t like anti-aliasing turned off - can it be turned on from the menu? Type Tool and FL are at least nice to look at. Any ideas?

My biggest wish for FL is

dezcom — Fri, 9 Dec 2005 17:55:55 -0800

My biggest wish for FL is that it be less buggy. Maybe this is a Mac only problem. It is rare that the ported product is as clean as the original.

ChrisL

> a lot of the aspects in

Nick Shinn — Fri, 9 Dec 2005 11:28:09 -0800

> a lot of the aspects in the Mac-Windows flame wars is “culturally acquired” rather than “inherent”.

Adam, I agree. And it’s interesting that PCs are the creatives’ choice in Eastern Europe, topsy-turvy, ennit?

But I think FontLab has been (and continues to be) somewhat blind to the cultural reality in a large section of its marketplace — the community of Mac-based, Fontographer-using type designers.

If FontLab is to shake its reputation as a techie’s production tool, rather than a creative’s design tool, it could start by holding off on the release of new versions until the Mac developers have finished, and release both PC and Mac versions at the same time.

Note that I am talking about it’s reputation.

Having said that, change is always difficult. Going from System 6 to System 7 was nasty. Going from Photoshop 5 to 6 (somewhere around there) involved a lot of mental re-programming. And so does going from Fog 1994 to Flab 2004.

Sorting out how which of Flab’s features can be customized so that they are like Fog’s from which Fog features Flab doesn’t have is a job of work. I note that there are both kinds on DB’s latest list. It really does drive one up the wall trying to figure out how to customize a certain feature, only to realize it’s not possible.

That’s why this thread is useful. In fact, it would be helpful to have a chart of comparable Fog vs. Flab features, showing how to achieve a Fog feature in Flab, or whether it’s possible. Sort of like Adobe’s “inDesign Conversion Guide” booklet for switching from Quark XPress.

My two biggest “wishes’ for Flab:

1. Constrain paths to x/y axis with shift key (as per DB #9)
2. An “expand stroke” feature that works as beautifully as Fog’s.

Other than that, I’m plodding along, getting a smidgeon more comfortable with Flab every day.

Peter: Fog 4.7.1 is

yuri — Fri, 9 Dec 2005 08:34:21 -0800

Peter: Fog 4.7.1 is released. Please, contact our support for update.

Amen. I want the David

Randy — Thu, 8 Dec 2005 05:20:59 -0800

Amen. I want the David Berlow edition of FL5. — Randy

I haven’t been able to

peterbruhn — Thu, 8 Dec 2005 05:05:52 -0800

I haven’t been able to work in the OSx cerison until now
and noticed one thing:

Why has the short command for Merge point changed?

It used to be “commando+M” now it’s “commando+T”

Is there any other short commands that changed
that I just haven’t had time to notice yet?
Is there a way to get it back to “commando+M”?

Paul wrote “nick’s

piccic — Sun, 4 Dec 2005 06:33:11 -0800

Paul wrote “nick’s statement was overly broad, implying that all creatives use macs.”

Well, I would have liked to be there around 1984 seeing people trying to be creative in graphics-related stuff with a PC.
Situation has changed radically, but this does not mean the PC remains the favorite machine for the generic user.
This influences the strategies of sotware producers.

Peter: antialiasing can be

yuri — Fri, 2 Dec 2005 01:27:02 -0800

Peter: antialiasing can be turned off in Fontlab. Just check properties for Glyph window.

Kathleen, it seems to be

Thu, 1 Dec 2005 12:32:57 -0800

Kathleen, it seems to be that you can do a “Clipboard Copy” from ILL to FOG. You have to make sure that your ILL preferences are right - Yuri posted about this elsewhere on this site - meaning you don’t want your clipboard contents to be in PDF format, but in AICB format. With this set correctly, you should be able to copy and paste freely between applications.

Yuri — in a week? That’s

ktinkel — Thu, 1 Dec 2005 12:18:29 -0800

Yuri — in a week? That’s lovely.

Now I have another problem, for which there may be a trick: How do you get FOG 4.7 to import an image from Illustrator CS2? I thought I read that it could be in .ai format, but I also tried .eps — no luck. (It was possible long ago, using the Option key somehow, but it doesn’t seem to work now.)

Thanks.

—Kathleen

For some reason it’s much

peterbruhn — Thu, 1 Dec 2005 11:41:12 -0800

For some reason it’s much easier to see the quality of the curve without anti-alias, than when it’s on.
Peter, could you explain what you mean by the “quality” of the curve? I find that an anti-aliased shape shows off its mistakes and dents much more clearly.

Maybe it’s just me working too long withouth anti-aliasing. For some reason I imagine I can see how smooth the curve is better without the anti-aliasing. I’ve found myself returning to FOG after trying to draw in Flab just to check the curves. But I might be the only one.

Dez, I taught at the Art

dberlow — Thu, 1 Dec 2005 08:31:43 -0800

Dez, I taught at the Art Institute of Boston’s undergraduate program for 3 years.
Really, another 10!? Oakydokey:

1. The “foreground” or “outline layer is usually reserved for that which is to be made into the contours of the output font. Layers were created to keep guidelines and other junk out of the way of the drawing process. What is this red guideline on the outline layer for?

2. Sometimes, I want to have one off curve point twixt two on curve points. Some people may not, but the option is technically legal. If I select and delete one of the two-off-curve points between two on curve points the other off-curve point is deleted too. Why?

3. If I open a new font, where do the bitmap images of Times come from? What layer are they on? Same thing when I paste an eps. Where does it go? I see it, but I can’t move it. The initial Times bitmaps disappear when I “activate” that glyph’s cell. Where do they go?

4. There is a selection option that puts a “Framework” around the contour(s) I’ve selected. This framework seems to allow the same things as regular scaling, and maybe something else but I don’t know. If I never ever want this kind of selection to occur, how do I avoid it entirely and forever?

5. The points are too small. Did I mention that, or did someone else? Do these have to be original to all threads or can I repeat them cross-thread? ;)

6. Fetch me a component: “select a Component Glyph” The options to finish the job of finding a component from my typed input are: “begins with”, “ends with”, “equal to”, “Less than” and “greater than”. Does “Contains” fit into the “Less Than” category? What would be an example of something you’d type that’d be “greater than” what you found? Am I in a Seinfeld episode?

7. Double points on top of each other, as in a start and finish point in the same location, were passé when Ikarus did it. If my understanding of this is correct, and I’ve gotten used to one point for both start and end since 1983, the beginning/end of contour Should behave exactly the same as any other point on the contour. Possible?

8. By default, objects from other layers should not be selectable. E.G the Metrics plain allows the wand tool. Select nearest contour...then what?

9. Back at that pesky pen tool: when I input a point, and then “depress the shift key” while inputting another point, I expect to form the nearest straight line, or 45 degree angle from the first input point, to the current input point. This is the standard interface for all Bezier drawing programs except the one I use, FontLab 4.6 for the Mac. Why?

10. Input, should always become the selection, Shouldn’t it? I.E. If I have a contour selected, and I grab the exacto blade tool, (even though it’ll be gone soon, maybe), and I insert a point on that selected contour, the point I just inserted should become the selection, and the contour that was selected should not. No?

For some reason it’s much

andyclymer — Thu, 1 Dec 2005 07:57:34 -0800

For some reason it’s much easier to see the quality of the curve without anti-alias, than when it’s on.

Peter, could you explain what you mean by the “quality” of the curve? I find that an anti-aliased shape shows off its mistakes and dents much more clearly.

Native Fontographer for Mac OS X now available

Grant Hutchinson — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 20:33:25 -0800

Give it up for those crazy kids at Fontlab. Yes, believe it or don’t - Fontographer 4.7 for Mac OS X is now available. Here’s a short list of the fixes and features of this release:

* Native support for Mac OS X,
* Support for the Euro character
* Updated encodings
* Copy-paste compatibility with new Illustrator and Freehand versions
* Numerous bug fixes

Huzzah.

http://www.fontlab.com/Font-tools/Fontographer/