A little update to fix some bugs. Also added two updates to help with identifying and fixing path point x/y values that have decimals (for the detail-oriented among us).

New Features

• Action to round x/y values for a Path Point, a Shape, or the whole Glyph.
• Project setting to highlight points that have decimal x/y values.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a SVG import bug involving relative path commands across compound shapes.
• Performance improvement for large projects.

This version was a fair amount of back-end work. But the improvements you’ll see, dear user, are all around being able to easily preview and add additional Unicode code blocks (or Glyph Ranges, as we call them) to your project.  There are also some enhancements to existing Custom Glyph Ranges, like being able to give them custom names!

There is now a large “Glyph Range Chooser” that lets you explore all the code blocks in Unicode, and easily add them to your project:

The Glyph Range Chooser can be launched from Font Settings, or from the Glyph Chooser panel which shows up lots of places.

Speaking of Font Settings, here is what the new “Additional Glyph Ranges” looks like:

Even after you add ranges from the Glyph Range Chooser, you can edit their names… or even their beginning and ending values.  These ranges are very open ended, and up to you to do what you’d like.

I couldn’t quite decide if this was a bug fix or a new feature… but anyway, there is also new functionality where only these “active” glyph ranges will be exported to OTF or SVG fonts (as opposed to every glyph designed in the project).

Below is the granular list of updates. There you have it!

New Features

• A huge Unicode Code Block range chooser – easily preview and add any Unicode code block to your project!
• Glyph Ranges now support custom range names.
• Glyph Ranges can now be edited.
• Font Exports and Imports now only export/import “active” glyph ranges… this may be more like a bug fix 🙂
• It is now possible to disable the Basic Latin glyph range.
• Global Action: Re-size all glyphs – now has an additional option to update the Glyph Width (advance width) property.

Bug Fixes

• Ligatures for HTML comment strings now work, like <!–
• Ligatures 0x 0X u+ U+ now work – they previously were treated as invalid Unicode / Hex inputs, but they are valid 2 character ligatures.

This is a very exciting release.  One of the very first issues filed on GitHub was to enable Ligatures.  Basically forever, we’ve had to rely on a workaround: Export to SVG then convert to OTF for Ligatures and Kerning.  Starting now, Ligatures will be exported directly to OTF!  Hopefully we’ll be able to work out saving Kern information at some point 🙂

New Features

• Ligatures export directly to OTF files!
• Ligatures that also have a single Unicode code point will be exported accordingly.
• A few small Ligature improvements around adding common ligatures, and displaying thumbnails.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug around handling glyphs that use multiple Component Instances with the same Root Component.
• Correctly handle / draw side bearings equal to zero.
• Allow / disallow correct characters when exporting metadata to SVG Fonts.
• Fixed an export bug involving locked points and glyphs with left side bearings.

New Features

• Global Actions – a set of actions that can be applied to many or all glyphs at once. We have 3 to begin with, let us know if you have ideas for any others, they are easy to add!
• Auto Zoom – a much improved algorithm for fitting the current Context Glyphs to your screen
• Shift + Nudge – holding down the shift key while using the arrow keys to nudge shapes and points will now move 10 Em Units instead of one
• New Project – menu item and keyboard shortcut to launch a new Glyphr Studio project

Bug Fixes

• Fixed importing winding information for paths
• Limit length of Font Family Name string, which causes OTF errors
• Cleaned up some typos and global variables
• Better “total failure” page error message

New Features

• Context Glyphs – type a few glyphs to show before and/or after the glyph you are currently editing on the edit canvas. Easily navigate to any of those displayed glyphs by clicking on that glyphs name on the Edit Canvas.
• Notes on the Ligature and Kerning pages describing how to export to OTF font files via SVG Fonts.
• Better slider controls for transparency settings (grids and guides) around the whole tool.

Bug Fixes

• Contribute link now works in the Desktop client.
• Show a toast notification when Undo-ing spans many glyphs, and requires navigating to a different glyph.
• Test Drive re-factored, including some very small updates.

New Features

• When inserting a new Component Instance, or using the ‘Get Shapes’ command to paste all the shapes from one glyph to another, there are new options to also copy Glyph Attributes like Width and Side Bearings. This is very useful if you use these copy commands for diacritical marks, where the new glyph should have both the shapes and the glyph dimensions of the root glyph.
• Little notation on the splash screen and on the About page that indicates if Glyphr Studio has been updated in the past week.

Bug Fixes

• Removed glyphs 0x0080 through 0x009F from the chooser panel. In Unicode, these are printing control glyphs that have no visual associated with them. But, browsers tend to replace these with ANSI glyphs, so the glyph chooser was erroneously showing previews, causing confusion.
• Fixed a bug where ‘Bulk transform shapes’ also transformed shapes in other glyphs.
• Added support for SVG number notation, where numbers like ‘123.45.67.89’ are interpreted as ‘123.45, 0.67, 0.89’.
• Fixed a bug to only export SVG glyphs if that glyph has a valid hexadecimal key value.
• Fixed a bug where you weren’t able to set a shape’s x/y coordinate to zero.
• Fixed a bug on Mac where releasing the command key did not exit multi-select mode. (Releasing the key should work, but if not, clicking either the Arrow or Pen tool again will now forcefully exit multi-select mode)
• Glyph Range in the Chooser panel is remembered when the panel is switched.
• Fixed a bug where editing shape width/height via Attributes Panel was not honoring Lock Aspect Ratio.

Two quick updates in a row:

v1.06

• Align Shapes – multi select two or more shapes or component instances, and you can align them Top/Middle/Bottom or Left/Center/Right.

v1.07

• Advanced Path Point and Handle alignment actions.

New Features:

• Hamburger Menu, you know, to be more ‘app like’

Bug Fixes:

• Import SVG – relative bezier curve
• Import SVG – chained rect/oval/circle notation
• Backend navigation stability improvements

Well – boolean actions are here, and the first one is Combine.  That’s the big update for 1.04, but you may notice something else before that – we slipped in new icons for actions in one of the previous patch updates:

Like before, these actions are contextually shown or hidden, based on a variety of things.  The icon in the lower right is the Combine action, and it shows up if you have two shapes selected. (BTW, you can multi-select shapes by using the pointer tool and Ctrl+Click’ing)

Combine Shapes is going to be kind of a progressive feature.  It works for the most part, but we’re still encountering edge cases where it fails.  That’s where you come in!  Please try out the combine feature, and if you repeatably run into an issue combining two shapes, please email us (mail@glyphrstudio.com) your Glyphr Studio Project File (.txt) and tell us which two shapes you’re combining.  We are also going to continue to thoroughly test the feature, and fix any edge cases we find.

Going forward, once the Combine algorithm is more solid, we’ll be implementing some related features:

• Combine more than two shapes at once.
• On the back end, combine shapes and make them semi-transparent for overlapping glyphs in Kern Groups.
• Provide an option to combine shapes within a glyph on export – to simplify and minimize font data.

All this stuff will be happening over the 1.04.x milestone, so stay tuned!