News from schriftgestaltung

Update 2: Read UFO faster in Fontlab

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:23:00 +0100

Yesterday I did some performance improvements in the readUFO function. My initial test shows a nine fold increase in performance (a bit more then 200 s import time down to 22 s) on mac and five times faster on windows.

Update: I added some small changes that improve the performance even more and fix a rare crash

Update 2: The official Robofab repository now has this optimizations. If you don’t like modifying the Code, download and install the latest version from here: code.robofab.com

Do this only if your know what you are doing and don’t blame me if something goes wrong:
To install the improvement, you need to find the objectsFL.py file.
On MacOS you find it here:
/Library/Python/2.3/site-packages/robofab/objects/objectsFL.py
For Windows I’m not sure.

make a copy of the file, open it in a Text Editor, find the readUFO function and replace the part between
'#glyph' and '#feature' with the following code (be careful not to screw up the indentation):

           import time
            # glyphs
            count = 1
            glyphOrder = self._getGlyphOrderFromLib(fontLib, glyphSet)
            glyphOrder = [glyphName.encode('ascii') for glyphName in glyphOrder ]
            AllGlyphsTime = time.clock() # performace measurement
            GlyphAverage = 0.0  # performace measurement
            flFont = self.naked()
            
            newGlyphs = []
            
            for glyphName in glyphOrder:
                new = Glyph()
                new.name = str(glyphName)
                flFont.glyphs.append(new)
            
            for glyphName in glyphOrder:
                startTime = time.clock()
                if glyphName not in glyphs:
                    continue
                glyph = RGlyph( flFont[glyphName] )
                pen = FLPointPen(glyph)
                glyphSet.readGlyph(glyphName=glyphName, glyphObject=glyph, pointPen=pen)
                if doHints:
                    hintData = glyph.lib.get(postScriptHintDataLibKey)
                    if hintData:
                        _dictHintsToGlyph(glyph.naked(), hintData)
                    # now that the hints have been extracted from the glyph
                    # there is no reason to keep the location in the lib.
                    if glyph.lib.has_key(postScriptHintDataLibKey):
                        del glyph.lib[postScriptHintDataLibKey]
                fl.UpdateGlyph(flFont.FindGlyph(glyphName))
                if bar and not count % 10:
                    bar.tick(count)
                count = count + 1
                GlyphAverage += time.clock() - startTime  # performace measurement
            print "import Glyph Time", time.clock() - AllGlyphsTime, "s, Average", GlyphAverage / count, "s"  # performace measurement
            # features

The code is mostly taken from robofab.com
Copyright © 2003-2010, The RoboFab Developers, Just van Rossum, Tal Leming, Erik van Blokland

Working for Fontlab

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 19:51:00 +0100

As some might have noticed, I’ve been collaborating with FontLab for some months now, so I think an explanation is needed.

It means that I will try to help them build better software bringing the experience I acquired in the past years as a type designer and software developer to the FontLab team. The Font community is very small and my belief is that any work done for it should be done in the spirit of collaboration to serve the user. My work for FontLab is only part time and so I keep working on my font design, on Glyphs and on other projects.

I will keep working on and improving Glyphs. A new website is in the works, and I’m still spending days and nights fixing and optimizing the software as I am planning an official release in the upcoming months.

I think there is enough room for more than one app.
Glyphs has a strong focus on designing fonts and thereby relieving the user from tedious tasks by adding a lot of automatization like automatic OT features, Glyphs naming, or managing accents and languages.
FontLab has a much broader scope from designing to control every detail of the production workflow (e.g. TrueType hinting, Codepage settings). For these reasons I use both Glyphs and FontLab Studio in my workflow.

Updated ufo-QuickLook-plugin

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:22:00 +0200

I just uploaded an update for the QuickLook plugin. It streamlines the file association. It should show previews for .glif files now.

Localization

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:33:00 +0200

With the latest version, Glyphs supports localization. The German translation is quite complete and I have almost complete French and Spanish translation by the end of the week. Anyone interested in translating Glyphs to his/her language? Send me an eMail and I send out the string files.

new Version

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:24:00 +0200

I’m proud to announce the availability of a new release of Glyphs.
It is now stable and complete enough – at least for me – to do production work and release fonts with it. Doing so, I constantly improve it.
Please check the change log and have fun with it.

fontlab2Glyphs export script

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:02:00 +0100

Just uploaded a scrit, that helps move your files from Fontlab to Glyphs. It generates a .glyphs file from a open Fontlab file.
You find it here

New place for discussion

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:43:00 +0100

I just created a new google group to discuss Glpyhs. The forum only attracts spam and I have no time to fix it. The group can be found here.

Screencast and Documentation

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:37:00 +0100

A screencast about glyphs and some documentation on scripting are online now.

Glyphs now open for beta tests

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:35:00 +0100

I would like to invite everyone to participate in the development of glyphs.
Download it, test it, report bugs and discuss suggestions.
Download Glyphs

Glpyhs at AtypI

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:36:00 +0200

I will give a small presentation of Glyphs at the AtypI conference in Mexico.

neuer RSS Link

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:51:00 +0200

I now use feedburner to publish my RSS feed. Please update your link.

Twitter

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:44:00 +0200

Get the updates and informations via twitter. I will announce new versions and smaller news there. My twitter name is @schriftgestalt

Beta tester

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:33:00 +0200

Anybody who is interested in beta testing Glyphs is welcome. Just me.

new vfb QuickLook plugin

Tue, 26 May 2009 01:29:00 +0200

Today I announce the release of the new vfb-QuicklLook-plugin. From now on .vfb files are real citizens in MacOSX.

Please go to the vfb plugin page.

update for ufo QuickLook plugi

Tue, 26 May 2009 01:13:00 +0200

The ufo-QuickLook-plugin is now available in version 0.5.
Now it shows some key glyphs to indicate the supported languages. Please download the new version at the ufo plugin page.

relaunch schriftgestaltung.de

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:00:00 +0200

I’m proud to announce the relaunch of schriftgestaltung.de. Now the site focuses on tools for type designers.

You are invited to take a look around.