Version 1.13 – SVG direct to canvas – also some v1 vs. v2 stuff…

The bar to get from Beta to Version 1 for Glyphr Studio was simple: design a font and export an OTF file. Of course this could be a huge amount of features, or something pretty basic. What actually shipped as V1 was somewhere in the middle, and V1 has come a long way since then (we just celebrated the 5th birthday of V1 in May!). Adding big features and small, all with the goal of being able to get typeface design hobbyists from zero to font as efficiently as possible.

But what should the bar be for V1 vs. V2? I have already started an exploratory project into re-writing the codebase. Not surprisingly, JavaScript has come a long way in the nine years I’ve been working on it (Glyphr Studio’s birthday was in April 2010). So there are some shiny new things in JavaScript and CSS that would be good dedicate some time to updating – so that’s V2, but when should work on V1 basically stop for that to happen?

Where I’ve landed is I would like Glyphr Studio to support me in my quest to design a typeface that I can submit to Google Fonts. I recognize this isn’t on a lot of people’s list of goals. Actually, based on user feedback, many users come to Glyphr Studio to design constructed languages (conlangs) – or just to create a Basic Latin font. This is great! Exactly what Glyphr Studio was designed for! So I think my somewhat lofty goal of creating a fairly fully featured typeface is a good stopping point for V1.

If you follow Glyphr Studio, you’ve seen a lot of action around Global Actions recently, and these really help with creating a typeface with more than just the Basic Latin range. With v1.13 done, you can now drag and drop, or copy and paste SVG code directly to a glyph’s edit canvas. Look – Glyphr Studio has a great set of vector editing tools, but I also know a lot of us (🤷‍♂️me included) still feel more comfortable in programs like Adobe Illustrator.

My point is, now hopefully there is a coherent workflow to design glyphs in some other program, easily import them to Glyphr Studio, then finish details like generating diacritical glyphs, kerning / spacing, ligatures, etc.

There may be some little updates to v1.13… but what I’m trying to say is Glyphr Studio version 1 is basically done. Have ideas for V2? Drop me a line at mail@glyphrstudio.com.

New Features in v1.13

  • Paste or Drag+Drop SVG straight onto the canvas – if your SVG is designed so it doesn’t need to be scaled, then you can copy the code and paste it directly to the edit canvas, or drag and drop an .svg file to import the shapes.
  • New Global Action – Advanced Diactritical Glyph generator. If you design glyphs in the Basic Latin and Combining Diacritical Marks ranges, then this action will use them to generate the Latin Supplement and Latin Extended A character ranges.
  • The ‘All Caps Font’ Global Action is now extended to (optionally) cover the Latin Supplement, Extended A, and Extended B glyph ranges.
  • Snap to Grid / Snap to Guide. Thanks to GitHub user monolifed for contributing the feature!
  • Updated the overall Glyph Names list to reflect the Unicode v.11 update that landed June 2018.
  • Better default view for empty glyphs.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a key binding so that the question mark glyph can be used as a Ligature, instead of summoning the keyboard shortcuts dialog.
  • Throw a warning if Monospace Global Action is set to zero as the width.
  • Importing a custom range from the Open Projects page.
  • Glyph Chooser panel now displays a selected range that was removed.