Whenever I try to use the fl.GenerateFont method when writing a script to generate a family of fonts from a MultipleMaster file, I never get far without FLS5 crashing on Windows XP. To replicate this bug, you can open then font freefontpro.vfb (
http://www.pyrus.com/downloads/freefontpro.zip), add 1 axis to make it a MultipleMaster file and run the script below. The script will usually write a few font files before crashing and may actually get all the way through the script if you are lucky. But if you run the script enough times, it WILL crash. I'm guessing that no one can run this three times in a row without crashing. This is a very nasty bug and one that I hope can be fixed as soon as possible.
Attached it an image of a typical warning shown when running the script. The odd thing (to me) is that the # in brackets changes whenever the script crashes.
#FLM: GenerateFont bug
from FL import *
import os, random, time
fPath, fName = os.path.split(fl.font.file_name)
mmFont = fl.font
for x in range(6):
a = random.randint(0, 1000)
b = random.randint(0, 1000)
print 'Instance %d %d' % (a,b)
fontInst = Font(mmFont, (a,b))
fl.Add(fontInst) # make it the current font
fl.UpdateFont()
pfaPath = os.path.join(fPath, 'font%d.pfa') % x
fl.GenerateFont(eval("ftTYPE1ASCII"), pfaPath) #this is the offending line
fontInst.modified = 0
fl.Close(fl.ifont)
print 'Done'
