Font Editors

[Christine Farrelly]

Do we want to list the various font editors - Xara doesn't export OTF or TTF so no conflict.

If so here's one that may be of interest - lite version is free.

http://www.cr8software.net/type.html

Christine

[Gare]

I downloaded the program and gave it a quick look.

It's actually a nice, difficult-to-use, fairly full featured program! Probably the non-free version has other features, but this little guy will page you through the glyphs in an existing font, it apparently has no capability to import AI files which means it absolutely doesn't work with Xara, however, it's been mentioned in this forum that Xara can't be the dead centre of every discussion.

It's available, mere mortals can indeed produce a font with it. Sad not to see I/O, but the price is right.

—Gary

[Gare]

This is a fairly wacky workaround: you can get CorelDRAW version 3 on Amazon for $4. I just searched.

Xara can export to CorelDRAW, and CorelDRAW has always been able to export characters to TrueType and Type 1.

Just a thought for those on a budget.

-g-

[angelize]

I've been poking around their website and found a comparison page for the light and full versions that shows the full version will import svg so using Xara is possible if you are willing to spend 60 dollars US

[handrawn]

I'd want to road test that first - xara svg export is basic spec - might well be ok for glyphs, but I wouldnt bet 60 USD on it without giving it a try out first

[Gare]

If you're going to spend $60, you might as well spend $90 and get Type Tool, made by the same folks who make FontLab and distribute Fontographer.

The two engineers who originally coded FontLab are Russians who it was generally conceded know PostScript better than most Adobe engineers.

-g-

[angelize]

I might consider that one, it sounds like it would be a good program to learn with and it will import eps so I could use Xara with it if I wanted to.

[Gare]

Here's another font editor by High Logic, who I haven't heard a peep from in a decade. The program is called (doh!) Font Creator, and the cheap non-commercial use only version is $79.

It meets the need to be able to import vector files and it looks pretty straightforward to use. I think there's a demo on this site:


Font Creator, $79 and up

The font editors we've gathered so far strongly indicate that if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. All the companies discourage novices from being serious from the get-go, due to the steep prices of their Pro versions. Although Font Creator, the Pro version is an obnoxious $200, compared to the totally outrageous $400+ for FontLab. Bill and I got on board before they blew the prices out of reach, I think.

The thing that made me look Hi-Logic up is a 20 year old font creator in Quebec named Jessica LaPointe >>>go here for her free non-commercial use handwriting fonts<<< who uses Font Creator and is getting some nice stuff out of it. The code has a negligible error or two, but still...

—Gary