Free FontLab VI Public Preview for Mac OS X available now! :)

Adam Twardoch
Adam Twardoch Posts: 515
edited October 2015 in Type Design Software

Hello Typedrawers! 

Yesterday at ATypI Sao Paulo, we premiered the FontLab VI Public Preview for Mac OS X. It’s still a pre-release in-development product, but now you can take a look at it and let us know your opinion. We're very much looking forward to it!

Best,
Adam 


Balance segment
Tunni lines for tension editing
Slide node




Rapid tool for speed drawing




Scissors tool to restore overlaps and open corners
Fill tool for complex live pathfinding
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Comments

  • attar
    attar Posts: 209
    What the rapid tool does is making the curve you already drawn continous between points or something?

    This and tunni lines and mixed glyph/metrics window as in Glyphs but with Harfbuzz support is quite cool I would say.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,432
    Want! What's the projected Windows timeline?
  • attar
    attar Posts: 209
    Ray Larabie said:
    Want! What's the projected Windows timeline?

    2025 ;)
  • Arthur Reinders Folmer
    Arthur Reinders Folmer Posts: 38
    edited October 2015
    I've been looking forward to this release, and it looks quite impressive!

    However, I really hope the performance for high point glyphs will improve. Currently even my 'lower' creations are chugging my system down to unusable levels for a decent workflow. Anything around 1k-2k points (and editing glyphs with those counts) becomes quite a strain.

    The reason I've been sticking with Fontlab V is that Robofont/Glyphs just haven't been able to deliver at the same standard of performance. If you have to draw/adjust thousands of points daily a latency of some milliseconds quickly becomes a strain on your work.

    I guess this has some to do with all the implemented curve aids? (even though turning everything off doesn't give FL5 levels of performance) I've been working around FL5's dated UI and bezier-handling quirks through turning to glyphs for simpler projects, but I'd still like to streamline my workflow and bundle it all together.

    I must add though, I'm an illustrator, less of a technician. I love optimising my beziers (hence I actually finalise illustrations in font software due to Illustrators imprecision) I know where the limits lie, however, if there are ways around this problem (and I'm just configuring my programs incorrect), I'm open to suggestions!

    I'm still looking forward for the final release! I'm sure a V/VI symbiosis could work as well ;)
  • Adam Twardoch
    Adam Twardoch Posts: 515
    Arthur, 

    the performance has to do with a combination of Retina, Qt and the layered compositing that is used by today's GUI toolkits. We've identified some sources of lags already and will be working on some solutions and also providing some optimization guides for users. Our developers assure me that we'll be able to increase the performance. 

    Best,
    Adam
  • Arthur Reinders Folmer
    Arthur Reinders Folmer Posts: 38
    Cheers!

    I've been playing around with the new gadgets in FLVI for the rest of the weekend and must say it works (and looks) really impressive!
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889
    Ray Larabie said:
    Want! What's the projected Windows timeline?
    We just started doing some Windows builds. As FontLab VI is built on the cross-platform Qt interface framework and C++, it is basically cross-platform to start with. There will need to be some tweaks, but the Windows version will be soon behind the Mac.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889

    Arthur Reinders Folmer said:

    I'm still looking forward for the final release! I'm sure a V/VI symbiosis could work as well ;)
    I work that way a lot. I have FLS 5 open with the font, open it again in VI, and as I make fixes and work on glyphs, I copy them into FLS 5 and save there. Allows me to use the fab new tools in VI, and take advantage of the relative stability of 5.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,430
    I have FLS 5 open with the font, open it again in VI, and as I make fixes and work on glyphs, I copy them into FLS 5 and save there

    Does FL6 open VFB files from FL5/etc?

  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,458
    Does FL6 open VFB files from FL5/etc?
    Yes!
  • Belleve Invis
    Belleve Invis Posts: 269
    Adrien Tétar said:
    Ray Larabie said:
    Want! What's the projected Windows timeline?

    2025 ;)
    Seriously?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889
    Belleve Invis said:
    Adrien Tétar said:
    Ray Larabie said:
    Want! What's the projected Windows timeline?

    2025 ;)
    Seriously?
    No. See my note above. I expect the Windows version will ship next year. It won’t be ahead of the Mac version, but should be within a few months.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889
    Dave Crossland said:
    I have FLS 5 open with the font, open it again in VI, and as I make fixes and work on glyphs, I copy them into FLS 5 and save there

    Does FL6 open VFB files from FL5/etc?

    Not only that—FontLab VI opens pretty much all other font editor formats:
    • FontLab Studio 5 (.vfb)
    • Fontographer (.fog)
    • Glyphs
    • RoboFont/UFO
    • Ikarus (.ik)

  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,995
    Not only that—FontLab VI opens pretty much all other font editor formats:

    Which of those formats does it also save to?

  • Belleve Invis
    Belleve Invis Posts: 269
    I hope Fontlab can support libspiro, which is extremely useful when modeling smooth curves. Almost every curve in Iosevka is modeled by spiros.
  • Jürgen Weltin
    Jürgen Weltin Posts: 18
    Thomas Phinney said:
    I work that way a lot. I have FLS 5 open with the font, open it again in VI, and as I make fixes and work on glyphs, I copy them into FLS 5 and save there. Allows me to use the fab new tools in VI, and take advantage of the relative stability of 5.
    How do you that? Just copy the outline of a glyph in VI doesn’t let me paste it into FLS 5.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889
    Jürgen Weltin said:
    Thomas Phinney said:
    I work that way a lot. I have FLS 5 open with the font, open it again in VI, and as I make fixes and work on glyphs, I copy them into FLS 5 and save there. Allows me to use the fab new tools in VI, and take advantage of the relative stability of 5.
    How do you that? Just copy the outline of a glyph in VI doesn’t let me paste it into FLS 5.
    That's exactly what I do. (Note that I have the glyph window open in each app, you can’t just copy/paste a glyph cell in the font window from one app to the other.)
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889

    James Puckett said:
    Not only that—FontLab VI opens pretty much all other font editor formats:

    Which of those formats does it also save to?

    For native font editor formats, it saves VFB, UFO, and its own formats VFC and XFO.

    VFC is the new binary format, while XFO is an extended UFO-XML variant that supports all our features.

    Are there other formats you would like it to save to?
  • Michael Jarboe
    Michael Jarboe Posts: 265
    Is there any benefit to saving in VFC or XFO? It seems with all the UFO-based apps that UFO would be the most desired. I still use FontLab 5 so I have to work with VFB otherwise it's purely UFO.
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,995
    Are there other formats you would like it to save to

    Glyphs. With .glyphs support FontLab VI will be a useful tool for me. Without .glyphs support FontLab VI will be useless.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,430
    Is there any benefit to saving in VFC or XFO? It seems with all the UFO-based apps that UFO would be the most desired.

    I would be happy if XFO meant a spec-compliant UFOv3 with FL6 'private' lib data
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889
    Michael Jarboe said:
    Is there any benefit to saving in VFC or XFO? It seems with all the UFO-based apps that UFO would be the most desired. I still use FontLab 5 so I have to work with VFB otherwise it's purely UFO.

    VFC is a FontLab native binary format, and will be faster than anything else for file operations.

    XFO is essentially a FontLab-extended UFO packaged in a Zip container. So it keeps all the FL data and there are performance advantages over naked/old UFO because of the reduction in file I/O. However, it will remain to be seen if other tools choose to adopt XFO support.

    UFO requires that some FontLab-specific data is relegated to private places. If you pass it through other tools, in some cases data may be lost. Whether that data is important to you is another matter. Because each glyph is a separate file, there can be some performance issues, particularly when reading or writing fonts with large numbers of glyphs.

    So, there are perfectly good reasons why FontLab has other format options for saving. But UFO is as much an equal player as we can make it.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889
    edited October 2015

    James Puckett said:
    Are there other formats you would like it to save to

    Glyphs. With .glyphs support FontLab VI will be a useful tool for me. Without .glyphs support FontLab VI will be useless.
    Duly noted. We will consider enabling saving in .glyphs format.
  • Jürgen Weltin
    Jürgen Weltin Posts: 18
    Thomas Phinney said:
    That's exactly what I do. (Note that I have the glyph window open in each app, you can’t just copy/paste a glyph cell in the font window from one app to the other.)
    Doesn’t work over here. :-(
  • Fernando Díaz
    Fernando Díaz Posts: 133
    Awesome work guys! Hope there's a stable version soon so we can buy it.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889
    We are still a ways off from having a retail app. But I am glad to hear you are looking forward to purchasing it.  :smiley: 
  • Ramiro Espinoza
    Ramiro Espinoza Posts: 839
    Thomas, please consider making the kerning interface fully controllable by key shortcuts so we can use game pads as it can be currently done in MetricsMachine.
    Moving up and down kerning text files and moving horizontally along each line using only the keyboard should be made possible. Also, of course, assigning kerning values increments with different key combinations. 
    Is it too much asking for the next Fontlab VI? 
  • Michael Jarboe
    Michael Jarboe Posts: 265
    PS4 or Xbox One?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,889
    edited October 2015
    Ramiro Espinoza said:
    Thomas, please consider making the kerning interface fully controllable by key shortcuts so we can use game pads as it can be currently done in MetricsMachine.
    Moving up and down kerning text files and moving horizontally along each line using only the keyboard should be made possible. Also, of course, assigning kerning values increments with different key combinations. 
    Is it too much asking for the next Fontlab VI? 
    That's a very reasonable request (now issue #90 in the new-new issue database, not to be confused with the old-new database).

    Indeed, one of the 40 or so bugs fixed in the FontLab Studio 5.1.5 / 5.2.2 dot releases is one to do with tabbing and arrowing between fields during keyboard-controlled kerning—which I reported myself. So it's fair to say that I am especially sympathetic to that particular request.

    That said, like the rest of the team, I am sympathetic to all kinds of reasonable requests, whether they match my workflow or not. One of the historic strengths of FontLab apps is not locking you into a single style of working, but enabling multiple approaches that users like.

    That philosophy is not changing in FontLab VI.
  • Michael Jarboe
    Michael Jarboe Posts: 265
    What is the advantage of game pad use, just being able to have a more casual approach and greater distance from the monitor?

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