Any of you pro colleagues have any experiences/opinions you'd be willing to share?
I'm working on a new font right now. FontForge is a great free and open source option but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with its bugs, limitations and instabilities. I just started free trials for both, RoboFont and Glyphs, but I was hoping to save some valuable time and avoid some pitfalls by learning some insights from other pro RF and Glyphs users.
Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome!
Below a couple things I'd be most interested to learn more about.
- Scanning/importing hand-drawn sketches
- Drawing-from-scratch experience (curves, smoothening, comparing, batch changes...)?
- Import/export options
- Ease of setting up custom and standard charsets
- Metrics/Kerning/Spacing (user-friendly metrics window, options for exceptions/pairing, lookups and group kerning)
- Grids, snaps, smoothening options
- Tweaking and additional styles (groups and batches)
- Interpolation features
- Validation features and from there quick, font-wide and/or group fixing options
- Type format options (exporting/saving)
- Retina-friendlyness
- Speed and stability
- General limitations/advantages
- Extensions/add-ons
- Any other tools I should look into
Thanks for any advice!
Comments
Raphael, don't exclude FontLab as a candidate. For one thing, it's not to limited to MacOS.
Raphael: I believe Glyphs will cater to all the needs you listed. I suggest making use of the free trial month to check whether this is true. If you can't find a certain functionality, ask on the Glyphs forum — it's probably already implemented, and if not, it might be within easy reach of a custom script.
- Scanning/importing hand-drawn sketches: Creating Fonts with Complex Outlines, Importing from Illustrator, or try Window > Plugin Manager > Trace Background
- Drawing-from-scratch experience (curves, smoothening, comparing, batch changes...)? See the tutorials listed under Basics on the Tutorials page, or the videos on the Get Started page
- Import/export options: Import UFO, SVG, PS/T1, OTF, TTF, paste vectors from apps like Sketch or AI, place all image formats supported by macOS; for exporting, see below (you asked that twice)
- Ease of setting up custom and standard charsets: Adding Glyphs to Your Font, try List Filters in Font View (see Handbook), or more advanced Custom Sidebar Entries in Font View
- Metrics/Kerning/Spacing: Spacing, Kerning
- Grids, snaps, smoothening options: not sure how smoothening relates to grids, but see File > Font Info > Other Settings > Grid
- Interpolation features: See Multiple Masters, part 1: Setting up masters and the following two parts.
- Validation features and from there quick, font-wide and/or group fixing options: There are many indicators throughout the app, as well as plug-ins, that help find inconsistencies, incompatibilities, etc., many ways to batch-edit/fix stuff. See for instance the Multiple Masters tutorials for MM-related validation/fixing.
- Type format options (exporting/saving): Save as .glyphs and .ufo, export as .otf, .ttf, .eot, .woff, .woff2, built-in AFDKO.
- Retina-friendlyness: Glyphs has supported Retina screens from the start.
- Extensions/add-ons: See Window > Plugin Manager, and the Extend page
Find the Handbook as free download on https://www.glyphsapp.com/get-started (and short instruction videos).