FontCreator 14.0 • High-Logic

Released 23rd June 2021 • Updated 24th November 2022

Check for updates for Maintenance Releases

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PDF Version of this review

FontCreator 14.0 adds support for variable fonts and updates the interface to use docking panels. Three pre-defined themes have also been added.

The Comparison Toolbar has been replaced by a Text Editing Mode in the Glyph Panel, which allows users to type any text before or after the glyph.

Known Issue: The Complete Composites feature has not been implemented in the initial release. Anchor-based glyph composition works as before.

Free help is available on the support forum, even for the unregistered 30-day trial version. The Help File will be available online, so that anyone can see the features before downloading the free trial version. The trial version is the full Professional Edition, but it adds watermarks. Existing users may like to see which feature requests have been implemented already.

FontCreator continues to improve with updates to fix bugs, add new features, and improve existing features.

Some bugs are fixed without hours. See the list of new features below, added since FontCreator 13.0.

Contents

Version 14.0

Conclusions

Version 13.0

Version 12.0

Earlier Versions

Video Tutorials

• On Vimeo
• On YouTube

Project Files

Important Note: FontCreator 14 projects are  backwardly compatible. Edit copies of your font projects and keep the originals as backups.

To avoid overwriting a previous version, install FontCreator 14.0 into a different folder with command: WinKey + R:

"%UserProfile%\Downloads\FontCreatorSetup-x64.exe" /DIR="C:\Program Files\High-Logic FontCreator 14"

FontCreator 14.0.0.2896

Changes Since Initial Release

• Changelogs
• Fixed export issue
• Fixed rare undo issue
• Dropped restrictions related to trial period and home edition
• Fixed variable font interpolation issue
• Updated Help and Manual
• Improved smart point deletion
• Fixed auto attach issue with complex ligatures
• Improved detection of contours with incorrect direction
• Include sample character within glyph frame for empty characters
• Improved processing of glyph metrics expressions
• Numerous other improvements and bug fixes
• Fixed issue with undo after adding glyphs
• Improved OpenType layout features after deleting glyphs
• Fixed issue with subsetting variable fonts
• Fixed issue with exporting instances of a variable font
• New exporting subsets of variable fonts
• Support for DesignSpace version 5.0 (subsets including extrapolation and discrete axes)
• Support for UFO Meta
• Support for UFO Unicode Variation Sequences
• Fixed processing axis variations table
• Improvements to the OpenType Designer
• Ceased hinting support for legacy Symbol fonts
• Ceased support for exporting legacy kern table; use GPOS pair positioning
• Added option to flatten components on export
• Fixed stability issue
• Numerous other improvements and bug fixes
• Fixed processing axis variations table
• Support for subsetting variable fonts
• Support for DesignSpace version 5.0
• Numerous other improvements and bug fixes
• Fixed import SVG bug
• Easy selection of contours with one or two points
• Fixed bug with cutting tool on open contours
• Fixed bug with exporting variable fonts
• Fixed issue related to exporting ligatures
• Improved export of OpenType layout features
• Improved detection of interpolation issues
• Several other improvements
• Fixed rare issue related to processing corrupt fonts
• Fixed generating single line color SVG fonts related to cubic beziers
• Added fea compiler support for unicode code-points as glyph names, e.g. uni12AB and u12345
• Fixed bug related to editing variable fonts
• Improved import of SVG files
• Improved smart point removal (select points and press Backspace)
• New ability to add glyphs to multiple composite glyphs at once
• Numerous other improvements and bug fixes
• Fixed a rare export issue which only affected variable fonts
• Improved the way floating points are shown
• Moved instant validation of incompatible layers to Validation wizard
• Numerous other improvements and bug fixes
• New option to optimise storage of OpenType layout features on export
• Fixed an export instances issue
• Improved import of SVG files
• Fixed pasting side-bearings
• Several improvements in the OpenType Designer
• Improvements to the shaping engine
• Copy an interpolated glyph outline
• On the Master tab you can type x / y (run/rise) for italic angle and caret slope
• Support for base() for lsb and rsb on opening fonts and when using anchor-based complete composites
• Numerous other improvements and bug fixes
• Fixed issue with Italic font style
• Fixed several issues related to undo and redo
• Fixed an Auto Attach issue
• Fixed Insert Glyphs issue
• Fixed import VOLT issue
• Fixed avar axis mapping issue
• Improved Web font export
• Added anchors and suffixes categories
• Fixed complete composites
• Added support for Unicode 14
• Updated OpenType layout tags
• Fixed an expression issue related to right side-bearings
• Fixed issue with insert contour feature with open contours
• Fixed import VOLT issue
• Fixed Add outline layer issue related to Cursive attachment
• Fixed setting WWS bit in Font selection flags
• Fixed rare issue related to corrupt exported font
• Fixed codepoint issue within Insert Glyphs
• Fixed axis mappings issue
• Comes with ttfautohint version 1.8.4
• Improved Web font export
• Added edit in class manager option for mark and contextual lookups
• Several minor changes and improvement
• Re-implemented calculation for metrics for horizontal writing mode
• Improved name generation on exporting a font
• Fixed background image colour issue in Dark Theme
• Fixed issue with storing colour members in font projects
• Fixed a Search glyphs by name bug
• Several minor changes and improvements
• Apply Everywhere (transparent outline fill)
• Edit Across Layers (delete glyph members, contours, points will keep layers compatible)
• Improved snap to grid functionality
• Fixed rare issue with mark-to-ligature
• Improved exporting instances
• Several improvements to the shaping engine
• Improved support for fea feature syntax
• Fixed issue with existing hinting
• Interpolation improvements
• Improved export
• Fixed a side-bearing issue
• Performance improvements
• Numerous other enhancements and bug fixes
• Improved speed of font export
• Fixed import SVG issue
• Fixed intersection and exclusion issue
• Fixed theme background colour issue on Find panel
• Fixed Shift and Ctrl options with new rectangle and ellipse
• Fixed export issue (CFF format reverted to TFF)
• Fixed minor shaping engine issue
• Fixed shaping engine issue that caused incorrect positioning
• Correct Windows edition in about box
• Fixed import SVG issue
• Fixed issue with opening outdated font projects

Changes in Initial Release

• Support for Variable Fonts:
  Edit or create variable fonts with multiple axes. The dialog displays the Windows font Bahnschrift. Variable fonts can be exported as a single font for those applications that support them, or as separate instances for those applications that do not.
• Import/export a Designspace document along with Unified Font Objects. This allows you to share your (variable) font projects with other font designers in case they use another font editor.
• Improved Web Font Test with support for Variable Fonts.
• Improved support for Arabic fonts, with improved shaping engine.
• Docking or floating panels replace dialogs. My YouTube Tutorial showing how to arrange the panels and toolbars, and how to backup your customised layouts.
• A choice of themes — Default, Blue, Green, or Dark. The blue theme is what I use.
• Show/hide rulers and scroll-bars in the Glyph Panel.
• The middle mouse button hides screen furniture, and contour outlines while panning the glyph contours.
• The spacebar previews the glyph contours without the screen furniture.
• The Comparison Toolbar has been replaced with a Text Editing tool.
• The Glyph panel always allowed you to show a background image, which is useful if you want to trace an outline. In addition to this, it now also supports a mask, which is basically a vector-based background. It allows for even more precision when you want to refine your glyph outline.
• The OpenType Designer now has an option to show the anchor cloud while working on your mark-to-base, mark-to-ligature, or mark-to-mark lookups.
• Tag Manager to add, delete, sort, rename, and select colours.
• Tag colours shade the entire cell in the glyph overview.
• We have implemented Variable FEA Syntax for glyph positioning (as proposed by Simon Cozens).
• Added some new shortcuts. Shift+F to change the selected node to the first point. Ctrl+F2, Ctrl+F6, Ctrl+F7 to show/hide the Font Properties, Masters and Layers, and Variations Panels respectively.
• New option to show different prefixes for Hexadecimal code-points: $, 0x, or none.
• Unicode blocks and code pages sorted alphabetically in font properties and insert character dialogs.
• New anchor cloud.
• Improved Auto Attach.
• Improved interactive proofing of OpenType layout features.
• Support for design spaces.
• Improved import and export of Unified Font Object (UFO) based fonts.
• Improved import of vector-based images.
• Improved high DPI support.
• Improved font data compression on export.
• Updated vendor information.

Conclusions

FontCreator continues to improve by adding full support for variable fonts. The new interface with docking or floating panels increases the amount of workspace on small screens, while allowing those with more than one monitor to extend their workspace beyond the primary monitor.

FontCreator 13.0

New Features Since Initial Release

PDF Version of this review

• Changelogs
• Bug Fixes: Glyph Properties dialog updates automatically, Improved anchor positioning, Dual mapped glyphs in search results allow scrolling, among others.
• Improved Import and Export for VOLT projects
• Added support for mark filtering sets to VOLT import and export
• Duplicate class
• Open substitution lookups from contextual lookups in code editor
• Export/import of colour palettes
• Optional slanted grid for italic fonts
• Improved paste contours into glyph overview window
• Improved OpenType Explorer
• Several minor improvements
• Edit and export OpenType layout features in VOLT syntax.
• New shortcut “z” to toggle “Zoom to selected” and “Reset zoom to default” in a glyph edit window.
• New shortcut “;” in the glyph edit window to set default bearings (remove offsets).
• New shortcut Shift+H hides guides and metrics. Shortcut “h” shows them again.
• Added PairPosFormat1 option (an explanation of why it might be useful).
• Snap to guides when resizing contours by corner handles
• Resize selected points (click on any of several selected points, or use shortcut “t”)
• Added No Tag category
• Added VOLT import support for ligature carets
• Export font as UFO (Unified Font Object)
• Added OpenType Explorer
• Glyph name completion in Insert Glyphs window
• Glyph name completion in feature code editor
• Added sample text validation
• Added glyph hint to Select Class Members dialog
• Drag and drop support for lookups in OpenType Designer
• Added option to exclude legacy cmap on export
• Added a context menu item to duplicate a lookup
• Sort glyphs by glyph names from UFO lib.plist file
• Sort glyphs by glyph names from file
• Import glyph outline from individual UFO .glif file
• Open Unified Font Objects
• OpenType feature script editor now also supports AFDKO fea syntax
• Copy and paste composites in same font

Changes in Initial Release

• Interactive proofing of OpenType layout features
• Support for OpenType SVG colour fonts
• Improved Colour Export options
• Enhanced Anchor Manager
• Fixed issues with anchors
• Improved Auto Attach
• New range is now optional in Insert Glyphs dialog
• Improved Shaping Engine
• Improved high DPI support
• Added preferred outline format to Options dialog -> Exchange tab
• Numerous enhancements and improvements

Version 12.0

• Improved performance of the Font Overview.
• Improved Font Validation.
• Improved calculation of font metrics to use Typo Metrics for line-spacing. See the tutorial: Font Metrics — Vertical Line Spacing.
• Updated CompositeData.xml not to use TypoAscender for vertical positioning.
• Support for displaying glyphs by code-point in the Preview Toolbar.
• Enhanced Glyph Properties dialog with expressions for anchor based composites.
• The Bearings Tab on the Transform dialog was removed since its function is duplicated on the Glyph Properties dialog, which now has fields for expressions and advance width.
• New transform script to select glyphs that may need to make use of auto attach.
• Improved design mode sort order.

• Anchor-based Generation of Composites
  Open the drop-down beside the Complete Composites icon to select the mode to use. Anchor Based will add anchors to the selected glyphs. Complete Composites will use the data in CompositeData.xml and will not add any anchors. Anchor-based positioning is generally more reliable, but Complete Composites works better in some cases. The two methods can be mixed. The last-used method is remembered and shown in the tooltip on hovering the icon. There is a checkbox in the drop-down menu by the last-used method. Auto will use anchor-based for accented letters, but complete composites otherwise. Anchor Based will recompose existing composites, but will not process glyphs such as Æ, while Auto and Complete Composites will compose it with A and E. If you want to use a different method for some glyphs without changing the last-used method, this can be done by using the submenu on the context menu in the glyph overview.
• Snap to Guidelines Improvements
  If snapping is enabled, anchors will snap to guidelines. Resizing contours horizontally or vertically will also snap to guidelines now, though not if resizing from the corner handles.
• OpenType Designer Improvements
  The Button at the top left of the OpenType Designer dialog opens another dialog to generate and update OpenType features. For example, one can add features for anchors: glyph composition/decomposition, mark positioning, and mark to mark positioning. Fractions (.frac), Alternative Fractions (.afrc) and Localised Forms (locl) features can be generated if the font contains suitable glyphs. Ligatures (.liga, .hlig, .dlig), and Ornaments features (.ornm) can be added, and a Capital Spacing (.cpsp) feature that uses a percentage of advance width or a percentage of units/em. Lookup tables can be rebuilt to include all suitable glyphs available in the font. Several other buttons have been moved to a drop list — making it harder to use some commands accidentally.
• Toolbar Improvements
  The Standard Toolbar has been split, creating a new Tools Toolbar, and an icon has been added for Custom Formulae. The Make Simple and Make Empty icons have been moved to the Tools Toolbar.
• Generation of Friendly Glyph Names
  User-friendly glyph names can be added to the full range of glyphs supported by Unicode 12. For example, Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictograms $F4A1 will be named  “electriclightbulb,” Emoticon $F602 as “facewithtearsofjoy,” etc.
  These user-friendly names are generated automatically from the UnicodeData.txt file supplied by the Unicode Consortium.
  They cover the full range of Unicode blocks and scripts. The names are stored in the Font Project file. By editing the file “glyphnewnames.dat” users can define their own custom glyph names that will not be overwritten by the automated glyph naming. For example, to use “circled digit one” and so forth for Alternative Annotation Forms (nalt), add new lines: 2460;one.nalt, 2461;two.nalt, 2462;three.nalt, etc.
  If characters are added via the Insert Characters dialog or with transform scripts using code-points, user-friendly glyph names will be added too, e.g. if character $1F6D2 is added it will be named as “shoppingtrolley.”
• Insert Glyphs Improvements
  Insert glyphs and add code-points based on glyph names. This improved feature can now add glyphs before or after the selected glyph(s), or at the beginning or end of the font. If user-friendly glyph names are typed in the dialog, glyphs will be mapped to the correct code-points. If ligatures are typed, composite glyphs will be generated automatically, e.g. type “fi=f+idotless” in the dialog to create an fi ligature without the dot, or type “fi=f+i” to create an fi ligature with the dot. The validate button counts the number of glyphs, strips duplicates, and checks if the glyphs exist. The “By Number” tab simply inserts unmapped glyphs before or after the selected glyphs, or at the top of bottom of the font. The dialog remembers its last-used settings.
• Unicode 12.1 Updates
  The Unicode Blocks and Character sets were updated. Comments were added to CompositeData.xml to mark the beginning of each block for users who wish to add their own definitions. New definitions must be added in order of code-points. The comments serve as a guide where to insert definitions.
• Improved Complete Composites
  The feature is now independent of the Private Use Area. OpenType features can be added to any font even if some PUA code-points are already in use. Users can add sets of glyphs for use by OpenType features: Petite Capitals and Small Capitals for Latin, Greek, or Cyrillic, Titling Capitals, Stylistic Alternates, Alternative Fractions, Superscripts and Subscripts for fractions, Scientific Inferiors, Ordinals, Old Style Figures, Lining, Proportional, or Tabular Figures, Historical Ligatures, and Discretionary Ligatures, while leaving the PUA free for other purposes, e.g. for glyphs that have no Unicode code-point assigned. Many errors were corrected, and positioning was improved, especially for italic font styles. Comments were added for Unicode Blocks to make the file easier to navigate. Complete Composites can be used to generate composite glyphs for fractions, scaled glyphs for superscripts, and for many symbols. Using it for Maths Operators, for example, ensures uniform advance widths and uniform strokes, e.g. for + × = and ±. Currency symbols use the figure width where possible. Trigrams and Digrams can be generated from Monograms; Enclosed alphanumerics can be generated from Large Circle and superscripts (or Petite Capitals), and Alphabetic Presentation Forms can be generated from lowercase letters. There are no definitions yet for Braille Patterns, but a character set like that obviously lends itself to automation. If composites are used, the whole character set can be modified by editing a few base glyphs from which the rest of the character set is composed. Font files will also be smaller because the same outlines are reused many times. For more detailed information on the changes read Composite Data Updates.
• Metric Lines for Superscripts etc.
  When opening glyphs with suffixes such as .sups, .subs, .dnom, .salt, .titl, .pcap, .smcp, etc., in the Glyph Edit Window, relative metric lines are displayed. The relative metrics are calculated from H.sups, x.sups, x.subs, H.salt, x.sinf, H.pcap or h.pcap, etc. If suitable glyphs do not exist, the relative metrics lines will not be displayed. The capital superscripts in the screenshot are aligned with TypoAscender. Baseline.sups and CapHeight.sups make it easier to position superscripts like O.sups or zero.sups with the correct overshoots above and below the relative metric lines.
• Enhanced Transform Scripts
  All of the transform scripts that relied on using code-points in the Private Use Area have been updated to use glyph names. The Validate button on the Transform Wizard dialog will now change the code format from hexadecimal to decimal, or vice versa, depending on the user’s selected preference, and convert consecutive glyphs to a range, e.g. “one two three four five” will be converted to “one-five.” Terminology on the Transform Wizard dialog was made more consistent. Some new Transform scripts were added to Align Horizontal Arrows (vertically), set bearings and advance width for combining diacritics, and to select glyphs for tagging based on their names. Other scripts were updated to use user-friendly glyph names in preference to code-points. Note: Generate Glyph Names before using them. The Transform Wizard also supports the new anchored based methods for Complete Composites.  For more detailed information on the changes to Transform scripts read Using Glyph Transformations.
• Undo/redo for Glyph Transformations
  Transformations can now be undone, which makes it much easier to test with different values and quickly arrive at the desired result, e.g. when generating Petite Capitals, which should be the same height as the x-Height, and the same weight as lowercase glyphs. The default values were based on the Verajja font, but will nearly always need to be adjusted for other fonts.
• Sort Glyphs Improvements
  Design Mode sorts composite glyphs after their base glyph: A, À, Á, etc. Capital letters come first, followed by glyphs grouped by suffix: .pcap, .salt, .smcp, A.sups, A.subs. These are followed by lowercase a, à, á etc., then lowercase superscripts and subscripts, then other glyphs grouped by type. Sorting glyphs permanently changes the glyph index. To sort glyphs without modifying the font, use the Sort drop-list on the Overview Toolbar.
  Unicode Code-points sorts by code-points,  sorting unmapped glyphs. The other options are the same as in earlier versions.
• Option to Include Glyphs in Exports
  Glyphs can be included in Exports to Desktop (ttf/otf) or Web fonts (woff/woff2) using the context menu. Rarely used glyphs can be included in OpenType fonts, but not in Web fonts, thus reducing the size of fonts for the web. Glyphs that are only used for design purposes can be excluded from all exports by selecting include in None. The marked glyphs acquire a prefix in the glyph overview caption of (d) for Desktop, (w) for Web, or (x) for None. Unmarked glyphs have no prefix and and are included in All exports.
• Font Overview Side Panel Improvements
  New categories in the overview side panel make it easy to see which glyphs will be exported. Glyphs that are experimental or only used as components of other glyphs can always be excluded when exporting. Fonts designed for the Web may not need as many symbols as those intended for print publishing. Many glyphs can be excluded from publishing to WOFF formats. I previously renamed my tags to identify glyphs not to include web formats and had to delete them before export. The “Include in Export” options can avoid that step, though I still use it to export OpenType fonts for Web publishing because in Serif WebPlus using OTF requires no special code and uploads the fonts automatically, unlike the more compact WOFF formats for which one must write a few lines of @fontface code and upload the fonts separately.
  The latest update now also includes an additional side panel category for scripts.
• Improved Window Tab Bar
  1. Tabs can be dragged to any position.
  2. Glyph edit windows open on the tab bar next to the overview tab for that type style.
  3. Open in New Window from Composite Glyphs opens a new tab to the right of the current tab.
  4. An icon indicates if a project has unsaved changes.
  5. The tab bar becomes scrollable when full instead of wrapping to multiple rows.

• Improved Templates for New Fonts
  These were updated to include combining diacritics and grid-fitting options. Obsolete glyphs .null and nonmarkingreturn were removed. Some glyphs were improved for when “Include Contours,” is selected. It is recommended to use combining diacritics with zero advance width for anchor-based composites. New font projects include a basic set of diacritics to support Latin Basic and Latin-1 Supplement character sets. More characters can be added easily using Transform scripts to support more languages, or unmapped glyphs for Small Capitals, etc.
• The ttfautohint plugin was updated to version 1.82.
• Support for delete in multiple substitutions.
• The list of Vendor IDs was updated.
• Unsupported Table Streams can be viewed.
• Option to decompose composite glyphs with scaled components on export.
  Scaled components may display incorrectly in applications. Making the composite glyphs simple on export prevents such issues.
• Scrolling in dialog boxes supports the use of the mouse-wheel. In the Composite Glyph member properties dialog, for example, one can now scroll x/y position by single funits and x/y scale by 0.01 instead of 0.1. Note: It is the field under the mouse pointer that changes value, not the active field.
• Comparison Toolbar Improvements
  Clicking on the comparison glyphs in the Glyph Edit Window jumps to that glyph, while adding the previously viewed glyph to the before or after field on the Comparison Toolbar. The context menu in composite glyphs has a new option to add the glyph members to the comparison toolbar.

• Reopen Submenu
  The full path and filename is now shown in the reopen submenu. The list can be cleared if it becomes too cluttered. Note: One can reopen a second copy of a font that is already open, so take care to reopen the right file; you could lose edits if you save the older version after saving and closing the newer version.

Earlier Versions

11.5 Feb 2018 • 11.0 May 2017 • 10.1 Nov 2016 • 9.1 Feb 2016 • 9.0 Jun 2015 • 8.0 Jun 2014

7.5 Aug 2013 • 7.01 Jun 2013 • 6.5 Nov 2011 • 6.0 Jun 2009 • 5.6 Jul 2007 • 5.5 May 2006

Download PDF reviews of previous versions

Page last updated on 24 November 2022