Shift, adding another open source font editor to the mix (early alpha)

kostyafarber
kostyafarber Posts: 1
in Type Design Software
Hey!

I wanted to share a project I'm working on called Shift. It's a new font editor that's free, open-source, and cross-platform.

I'm a software engineer by trade but have always been interested in type design. I wanted to learn, and instead of learning to draw glyphs I procrastinated my way into building a font editor. The project sat dormant after a strong start about a year ago, but I've picked it back up recently and have been making steady progress.

There are many great tools out there, but not as many open-source options. Fontra has done a great job leading the charge and I know there are a few others floating around. I'm trying to bring product thinking and design taste to this — making it feel like a premium option, but free.

Where it's at right now:
  • Bezier drawing and point editing (pen tool, select, smooth/corner toggling)
  • Snapping to points and metrics
  • Full metric guides (ascender, cap height, x-height, baseline, descender)
  • UFO support, TTF/OTF loading and export (using fontc)
  • Undo/redo, copy/paste, transforms (align, distribute, rotate, flip)
  • Glyphs app like text mode
  • Components (early stages)
  • Glyph grid view and search
And probably more I've forgotten.

I'm not distributing builds yet — it's still very early alpha — but the code is all on GitHub and I'm building it in the open and I post a lot about my progress on X. I'd love to hear what others would want in a font editor if they could have it. I don't have years of experience as a type designer, so that kind of input would be really valuable. I've also got a discord if you want to hang out or say hi!

thanks!
Tagged:

Categories