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Do you have news you would like to publish? If so enter it using our news form. FontLab 4 Release AnnouncedThe newest version of FontLab, v4.0, is on the verge of release. As soon as the documentation is finished (a matter of days) the Windows version will be up on the Fontlab websites and ready for distribution. The Mac version is also in progress, but will take a couple months longer. FontLab 4 is a major new release with hundreds of new features. The interface has been updated, and, in fact, one of the new features is that the interface is almost completely customizable. The user can add or subtract menu items, keyboard shortcuts, and toolbars/buttons. The big news, however, is the availability of OpenType features. As John Hudson, Adam Twardoch, and Ross Mills demonstrated during the day long Font Technology Forum, typographers can now use visual FL4 tools to add their own OTF features to their fonts. Ligatures, super and subscripts, fractions, etc. can all be incorporated into a font and be automatically substituted when appropriate. FL4 can add any OT feature supported by the Adobe OT FDK to a font. Further, both TrueType fonts and Type 1 fonts can be used as the basis for new OpenType fonts. The second biggest news is that FontLab now supports the Python scripting language and has an interface that allows users to create their own typography tools. Python is a scripting language that is growing rapidly in popularity, especially for working on the WWW. It’s relatively easy to use and once you know the basics you can do some very powerful things. For instance, during the Font Technology Forum Adam Twardoch demonstrated a Python script he he’d written which allowed him to change all the vendor URLs and version numbers in a library of 126 fonts within a minute or so. Another new feature is the sketch drawing mode. Along with VectorPaint mode and Bezier mode this gives the typographer a whole different view of the glyph and new tools to perform some actions which just weren’t possible before. And these new features are just the beginning. Come to the FontLab 4 demo at 2pm on Friday in the computer room to see Yuri Yarmola give a complete overview. Posted on: 16:26, 20 September 2001 |