The hand tool is one of my go to methods of moving around the screen, and only being able to do so in preview mode disrupted my entire workflow. After a lot of trial and error I discovered in order to get the hand tool you need to be in preview (keyboard command space bar). When I move around the glyph screen I will often use the hand tool to orient myself, at first I didn’t think there was one. The zoom tool wouldn’t allow me to zoom to a specific location, or selection zooming like Adobe, instead it just zooms in to the center of the current window. Two features that bugged me were the zoom tool, and the hand tool. By having them pre installed FontLab 7 is making it easier to start designing type right away. In other software I would need to install a different plugin for each of these. There are also options to edit Tuni Lines, harmonize handles, and balance paths. For example a version of the SpeedPunk plugin (called curvature) which allows you to see the smoothness of your contour is a default tool in FontLab 7. The tool isn’t perfect but it is a fast and efficient way to draw letters which can then be refined by hand.įontLab 7 includes tools to help draw better glyphs which are plugins in GlyphsApp and RoboFont. The rapid pen tool allows you to click where you would normally put down points but when you double click it creates a curve and a single click is a square corner. The Rapid Pen Tool is my new favorite tool, and I would like to use it in all of my products. Where FontLab 7 really shines is when it comes to the pen tool. The fix for this issue was simple, unfortunately it took a lot of time to figure it out. This can be done through the simple keyboard command cmd + m. After a series of google searches, reading, and watching youtube videos (the FontLab help tutorials and support leaves much to be desired, more on this later) I discovered that you need to create a layer mask with the image in it for it to not appear. When you drop an image in FontLab 7 it shows up in the foreground. I am used to the easy drag and drop in Glyphs App, which automatically puts the reference image in the background. When starting a new typeface I typically start out from a sketch, drawing, or scan as reference. While it is a roundabout way to add non-latin characters, it is an improvement over previous versions of FontLab which had almost no support for non-Latin scripts. This allows you to select an already existing glyphs set and import them into the work screen. These can be accessed by clicking on “Encoding” at the top of the screen and changing it to scripts. It takes a bit of digging to realize that FontLab 7 does support other scripts. Bellow that there are options to add the characters for “Latin” “Cyrillic” and “Greek”. On the left are a series of drop downs which show the glyphs that have been created/drawn. The latin script with punctuation and diacritics are automatically created. Once a new project has been created a screen summarizing all of the glyphs in your font appears. Typeface designer and design writer Renée Clark puts it well when she says: “The Latin default setting in type design software assumes a lot about design flow and type design itself.” Allowing typeface designers to choose which script(s) they will be working from the outset is a step forward in removing the Latin script bias. (This happens in all 3 industry standard apps). In the future it would be nice to have the option to select the scripts in the project, instead of it just assuming Latin. The first thing that appears is a new project window (similar to Adobe’s), which is a great indication that the app is running, and something that I have always disliked about Glyphs App (there is no start up screen). On start up of FontLab 7 I instantly felt comfortable because the app resembles the interface of most Adobe apps, and the interface is similar to GlyphsApp.
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