I am setting up Windows 7 and 8.1 VMs on a new Mac. I went with 64-bit Windows on both.
When installing Python for typical fonty things with FontLab Studio, should I use 32-bit or 64-bit Python? I would have assumed 64-bit, but some sources say that for compatibility with "some" (unspecified) modules it is better to have 32-bit.
Thoughts? I expect I'll be running Python 2.7.6 with FontTools, TTX, RoboFab, DialogKit, and Vanilla.
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I don't have first hand experience with 32 / 64 bit Pythons in FontLab on Windows on Mac, but I can say this:
- Vanilla is a wrapper for Cocoa, so that won't work on Windows.
- DialogKit is pure Python, so it doesn't matter.
- So is RoboFab.
- FontTools has a type1 reader/writer in C, but otherwise it should be bit-agnostic.
Good point about Vanilla—which also means any scripts requiring it won't work on Windows. Not a huge deal as this is all on a host Mac anyway.
Thanks!
T
Seems odd to me though. With hinting being a windows-only issue, OT being a windows-owned issue, color fonts and size masters being new windows-first issues... but there is no chocolate to the Mac's vanilla. I'm still astonished that MS has made no move.
Two questions:
1) Anybody want to test out or critique my directions before I post them more publicly? Mac and/or Windows.
2) Erik above says “ Vanilla is a wrapper for Cocoa, so that won't work on Windows. DialogKit is pure Python, so it doesn't matter.”
Yet at http://www.robofab.org/talks09/dialogkit.html it says “DialogKit is a Python library for creating GUI dialogs in FontLab and Mac OS X Cocoa applications that have a Python layer. The library implements a subset of the Vanilla library....” So is DialogKit WIndows-compatible, or not?
But... it directly contradicts what Erik wrote, and he generally knows the whole FontLab/Python area pretty darn well, as one of the RoboFab developers. So I thought I should double-check. Of course, anyone can make a mistake... some just seem less likely mistakes than others, is all.
DialogKit is based on the Python implementation of FontLab how to make interfaces. It works both on Mac and Windows versions of FontLab 5.
So, I stand corrected. But the value of something up-to-date remains, I think.