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What Font making software are you using?
Charles Borges de Oliveira
Posts: 71
Sorry if this has been asked repetitively. Just curious. I have been using Fontlab for years and I do enjoy it minus the occasional bugs /crashes here and there. I have heard of Glyphs but have never used it.
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FontLab Studio 5 for (double) checking existing/exported fonts.
I really really really like the UFO ecosystem's simpler, more specialized tools and the accessibility/durability of the UFO format.
Mostly using FontLab, lots of custom macros, RMXtools, UFOstrech, Prepolator and Superpolator.
Also:
- Licensed Metrics Machine, mostly to play around, and its great. Haven't used it for a complete project yet, but hopping to put it to real work in the future.
- Played around on both Glyphs and RoboFont betas, and both looks great. They will be my next purchases pretty soon. Among other reasons, to be able to use Yanone's awesome SpeedPunk plugin.
- FontForge is getting a complete makeover. Since a few weeks ago, there is an easy to install drag-and-drop Mac version available (And they keep releasing new and improved builds every day). I've been playing around lately with Spiro curves, and they seems great for creating swashes and things like that.
@James, how do you like Metrics Machine?
Except that if the font is intended for web use and needs TT hinting, I'm kind of stuck with FL, or I have to hint in VTT.
VOLT
VTT
Font Validator
DTL OTMaster
I'm mostly Windows based -- which is why I've always been happier with FontLab than most of my Mac-using colleagues --, but occasionally fire up the Mac to use UFO Stretch.
People are often surprised by how much use I make of MS Excel in font development.
I like the idea of UFO files as a source format, but I've found that they get pretty big for some of my fonts and slow to load. Since we're using VOLT for OTL work and VTT for hinting, sfnt is our main source format. I look on FontLab VFBs as glyph sources rather than font sources.
RMX Tools
...and a host of utilities and tools outside of my font editing environment. TTX, DTL OTMaster, ttfautohint, VTT, Font Validator, AFDKO CompareFamily, etcetera.
Because I only do type design part time, I have a lot of inertia. I am tempted by Glyphs and need to learn more about RoboFont. I have recently had enough exposure to FontForge to be clear that it is not for me any time real soon.
A lot of Python scripts for FontLab
RMX Tools
RoboFab
AFDKO (autohint, compareFamily)
MS Excel (font info; a lot of small calculations, most of them related to measurements in FontLab)
MS Word (to write scripts, OpenType features, in-house documentation)
I use TextMate on a daily basis for writing/editing scripts. Numbers or Excel are handy for family planning.
Then I use almost all other UFO-based tools (Prepolator, UFO Stretch, Rounding UFO, Superpolator, MetricsMachine).
And in the last stage of production I use Font Validator, AFDKO, TTX and some other afterburners.
Over the years, I've collected a sizeable collection of one-off font tools, mostly now obsolete thanks to DTL OTMaster. Some of them, I can't even remember what they were for, or if I ever actually used them in production or only tested them. I've even got an sfnt table editor that is entirely in Japanese.
I do have licenses for Robofont and the other UFO tools, Fontographer, TypeTool etc. but hardly ever use them. I used to work mainly in FLS, but that changed pretty soon once Glyphs was out.
SCNR.