Cocoa FontLab

[Glagolitic]

After waiting a few years to upgrade, I'm finally with the latest FontLab on the Mac.

A few things dissapoint.

1. It still defaults to the now depreciated code-pages for fonts rather than Unicode.
2. Pasting unicode text in the font preview window does not work.
3. Clumsy navigation between unicode ranges, even though customizable. Can't look at whole BMP at once.

All this could be solved if FontLab moved to Cocoa. I did some searching on the forum, and back in 2006, customers were begging for Cocoa and Universal Binary versions of FontLab. Adam Twardoch wrote: "my own hope is that Apple will introduce a new set of tools and technologies for Mac OS 10.5 which will possibly let us make a yet closer move to a valid solution". While Cyril Murzin opines: "I have different view on it. I hate Apple for no respect to developers. " (http://forum.fontlab.com/archive-old-fontlab-forum/fontlab-osx-universal-binary-t2822.0.html)

Fast forward to 2009, and nothing seems to have changed.

Something basic is missing here: Apple makes the rules of this game, and if you want to play, you have to follow the trends.

As a smart developer, you not only follow trends, you learn to anticipate them.

FontLab works with core technologies: ie. fonts. It needed to be ported to Cocoa years, years, years ago.

Please identify trends in technolical changes, and take the initiative to move forward.

In any case, I shouldn't be typing sample text in 2009 and have the Preview window reject Unicode inpput!

[glenno]

Does FontLab still require Rosetta to run on OSX Snow Leopard?  If so, are there any performance hits or other issue with doing so (apart from those already noted above)?
If Rosetta is still required I may wait to buy FontLab for the Mac until it's properly updated for Macs, but just wanted to know what people's experience has been on Snow Leopard.
Thanks.

[Mark Simonson]

I've been running FLS5 on Snow Leopard for as long as it's been possible (since the first big SL update). I've had no trouble with it (none that I didn't have before, anyway). Performance is not noticeably different than with Leopard. It does require Rosetta. Next version will be Intel native, as I understand it.

[Alex Petrov (FontLab)]

Does FontLab still require Rosetta to run on OSX Snow Leopard? 

Rosetta is still required. And there is one major problem. Several users reported that Fontlab Studio fails to remember the s/n on recent top models of MacBook Pro.

[Mark Alan Thomas]

Yeah, this happens to me with my MacBook Pro. I have to re-enter the serial number every time I launch it. Other than that, the app seems to work fine.

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