dtl FoundryMaster 1.x is expected to be available in the spring of 2024. For questions, please contact the Dutch Type Library.
Introduction
dtl FoundryMaster (fm2) is the advanced successor for macOS, Windows, and Linux of the dtl FontMaster (fm) suite, which was released back in 2001. The application is the result of 40 years of font-tools development, which started with Dr. Peter Karow’s invention of the ikarus format in the 1970s. This format can actually be found under the hood of fm2 still.
FoundryMaster is, in line with its ikarus-based precursors, particularly a font editor for the somewhat more technically savvy type designers and font producers. After all, everything can be arranged in detail and adapted to the needs: shortcuts, display size, color, the tools palette, the accuracy of the conversion from cubic to quadratic Bézier splines, encoding system, and so on.
As mentioned, FoundryMaster is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Unique functionality
FoundryMaster offers some unique nifty batch functionality, such as for intelligent scaling and numeric stem-adjustment.
Furthermore, FoundryMaster can be used to check and control the conversion to quadratic splines on the fly and in addition to directly edit these splines. Quadratic splines can be optionally stored in the qq (2-byte) or iq (4-byte) formats.
The Side by Side Viewer makes it possible to compare glyph sets in fonts and offers several options for filtering and viewing.
Because FoundryMaster also supports the ufo format, it is quite simple to integrate in existing workflows based on other font editors.
Variable fonts
FoundryMaster can be used to develop fonts in the OpenType Font Variation format from scratch, or to prepare and modify already existing fonts for the production of variable fonts. The interpolation tool offers some sophisticated functionality to make glyphs isomorphic. It marks, for example, the differences in contour points and is able to solve many of these automatically. The actual generation of variable fonts is a fairly simple process with fm2.
In addition, for the final proofing and, if necessary, modification of variable fonts, the advanced post-production tool dtl OTMaster can be used.
File formats
FoundryMaster supports, besides the ufo format, urw’s proprietary be/ib ik/ii and qq/iq glyph-storage formats. The be/ib formats are the cubic-splines ones, the qq/iq are for storing and editing quadratic splines, and the ik/ii are representing the ikarus format. The be, qq, and ik formats are all two-byte (with a maximum of 65536 per database). The ib, iq, and ii are four-byte variants (theoretically with a maximum of 4294967296 glyphs per database). The ‘i’ in the four-byte formats stands for ‘intelligent’.