Announcing Type.World 1.0

yanone
yanone Posts: 130
in Font Technology
Happy to announce the release of the first stable release of the Type.World font installation app.
I’ve written a first blog post along with it: https://type.world/blog/hello-type-world

Please feel free to ask me any questions you may have.
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Comments

  • Florian Pircher
    Florian Pircher Posts: 176
    edited June 2021
    Congratulations on the 1.0! Are there already some font vendors where I can try the service? Sorry, missed the last paragraph in the announcement. @Jens Kutilek’s free fonts are ready for prime time.
  • Florian Pircher
    Florian Pircher Posts: 176
    edited June 2021
    I just tried it and it worked well. I was a bit confused after launching the app and only seeing this:

    The logo in the bottom left did not read like a button to me and I was not sure if I could quit the app or if I had to make an account or what else to do. I did nothing and clicked the Open in Type.World App button (neat icon) on your website and sure enough, the app opened and I could install fonts just fine.

    Some buttons looked disabled and are somewhat difficult to read, like the individual install buttons and the cancel button:




    The close button in the settings is hidden:



    The accounts tab does not explain why I would want an account. It’s explained on the Type.World website, but a short description within the app would help.

    Previewing individual styles would be a great feature so that I can pick the right styles directly from the app (e.g., comparing Conta Italic with Conta Mono Italic).

    At 220 MB it’s surprisingly large, among the largest apps on my system.

    I don’t want to sound overly negative. This is a 1.0 and it works well; most of the above are details that can be addressed in point-updates. Looking forward to trying this with other font libraries.
  • yanone
    yanone Posts: 130
    At 220 MB it’s surprisingly large, among the largest apps on my system.

    I know. It's so bad. This is the only point that I can't really do anything about easily. The cross-platform framework that I used, the only one I could find that easily allowed me to do everything I wanted, bundles a ton of crap. I can tweak this a bit, but can't promise much. Getting the size down significantly requires a complete rewrite from scratch, betting on frameworks close to the OS such as Cocoa for Mac, and it almost certainly means to decouple the two app versions from each other, which for the time being I can't afford.

    All your other points are valid and all known. People will be required to open a user account once "protected" fonts (such as retail fonts) come into play, with an explanation.

    I'm also planning an introduction that introduces the most important places in the app with popups.

    The app is in its most basic form right now, and that's because the protocol and all the server-side part required so much work. The app is really only the front end.

    Thanks anyway for your review. Almost all of the issues you raised will be addressed, tho it could take until October, because I need a break.
  • yanone
    yanone Posts: 130
    Stung by ambition I started optimizing a bit, and got the app size down to around 130MB. It may or may not be the bottom.

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