Saturday, July 10, 2010

I've got big plans for the new Fontographer...

I finally finished reading the Fontographer manual! It's over 500 pages.

A few things I'd like to try have to do with OpenType. I'd like to standardize my fonts with certain features--like automatic ligatures, fractions, etc. I haven't decided exactly which ones, but I'm excited that it will all be doable in Fontographer. Of course, it's not exactly straightforward--you have to create a text file using Adobe's language to define features. However, once that file is set up, as long as the fonts all have the proper characters, you can reuse that file for other fonts.

I think I'll experiment with a new font and release it as freeware to test out the features. Of course, feedback will be welcome and appreciated. Look forward to it!

Sunday, June 27, 2010

New Fontographer! Release planned for updated Nu Casual

Fontographer has finally been updated to version 5.0! I'm in the process of reading the manual. It's a bit of deja vu, as I'm sure I've read it over a decade ago. However, there are a few new things here and there, so it's worth going through the whole thing again.

My plan is to regenerate all the fonts in OpenType format. Then there will just be one format for all the fonts--no more worrying about whether it's TrueType or PostScript, Mac or PC. I'm sure that it will be much less confusing for customers as well. Sometimes too much choice is a bad thing.

Anyway, we'll take it one font at a time. I'm going to get Nu Casual ready for re-release. As you can see in previous entries, I was in the middle of a small re-design. Unfortunately, I never released the update due to circumstances.