Adding back in a few ideas leftover on the v2.8 ideas list, a new Outline Mode is the big new feature. There is a new toggle button in the lower-right of the Edit Canvas, which switches how the character shapes are displayed.
Namely, outline mode will show:
- Counter-clockwise paths as a dark blue
- Clockwise paths as a slightly lighter dark blue
- Component Instances as dark green
For other typeface design programs, this mode is the default. Personally, I always thought it was odd – the “Filled” style of showing shapes gives you a constant preview of what the finished result will be. The one place this breaks down, though, is trying to understand characters that have very complex paths, or hidden geometries that may be causing issues.
Whatever your reason, you can now toggle back and forth between filled and outlined modes on the Edit Canvas.
Two other small bug fixes turned into semi-significant improvements or features.
Better Unicode Names
Glyphr Studio has all the Unicode plane and character data built in. But, there are some gaps in the Unicode standard (on purpose) and Glyphr Studio lets you define *any* character code point you want, even ones not defined by Unicode.
Previously, these characters had a default name that was not super helpful. The new default is, if a character’s name can’t be found, to default to the Unicode ID number, something like “U+12345”. A small improvement, but it may help with certain edge cases.
Fixing Ligature and Kern Support for Emojis and other BMP+ characters
This started out as a bug on the Live Preview page, and trying to display Context Characters. These scenarios require text input from the user. And, if your project involves characters above the Basic Multilingual Plane (above U+FFFF) then we’re getting into the tricky text handling zone of Surrogate Pairs. This has to do with how characters are encoded – and if handled improperly, single characters from higher Unicode planes will be interpreted as multiple different characters.
This is how Glyphr Studio was (not) handling surrogate pairs, resulting in buggy behavior. After fixing the Live Preview page bug, it actually also added new behavior that is almost a new feature. Kern support and Ligature support is now extended to BMP+ character ranges. So, if you ever wanted to Kern an Emoji, or create a Ligature for multiple Emojis typed in a row, now you can! Emojis are just one example, support is now extended to all characters above U+FFFF.
That’s it!
There were some other minor bug fixes as well, but the stuff mentioned above is the fun stuff. As always, these improvements came directly from interacting with users (like you!) so if you have ideas, or are running into any issues, just drop us a line and we’d be happy to listen: mail@glyphrstudio.com