Fontographer vs Fontlab 5 or Typetool

[letterwiz]

Hello,

I am considering a trip down to Buffalo to the Typecon conference. I notice that the workshops list Fontlab 5 or Typetool as the required software. Unfortunately I only have Fontographer 4.7.3 (latest) for Mac.

Does anyone know what the difference between these programs is or why one might be preferred over the other?

I am a little out of touch but I did know a couple of people that make a living by creating fonts they both used Fontographer. Thats why i originally chose to buy it.

Thanks,
Ruth

[Der FontMeister]

Ruth,

The $64 million dollar continues to haunt me all the way back to my days as Der Fontographer FontMeister at Macromedia...

1. it's a religious issue and no matter what I say - various terroists go nuts and complain that they disagree... so I repsond by saying I'm entitled to an opinion just as must as anyone else...

2. FOG is the easiest way to make a font for the AVERAGE person... now a PRO would (and many of the fonts you use are done this way) postprocess the font in FontLab or TypeTool.

3. FontLab or TypeTool are not impossible to learn but the learning curve is longer.

4. A good compromise on ease of use and pricing is TypeTool.

Now, you may fire away with more questions and we will help you decide which is best for you.

Jimmy G.
Der FontMeister

[Evertype]

I always, and only, draw in Fontographer. I can't make head nor tail of the tools in FontLab. But I always post-process my fonts in FontLab. Both are indespensible tools.

Michael Everson

[Der FontMeister]

I thot I covered this pretty well in my last post...

1. it's a religious issue and no matter what I say - various terroists go nuts and complain that they disagree... so I repsond by saying I'm entitled to an opinion just as must as anyone else...

2. FOG is the easiest way to make a font for the AVERAGE person... now a PRO would (and many of the fonts you use are done this way) postprocess the font in FontLab or TypeTool.

3. FontLab or TypeTool are not impossible to learn but the learning curve is longer.

4. A good compromise on ease of use and pricing is TypeTool.

Now, you may fire away with more questions and we will help you decide which is best for you.

Jimmy G.
FontLab Ltd.

[Baron Von Cruzer]

I started making fonts during Fontographer's many years in limbo, so I didn't even consider it.

So I started with TypeTool. My situation with FontLab Studio is that it has a lot of advanced features I just don't use. I upgraded to it for only one feature: Class Kerning.

So if a new version of TypeTool came out that is Intel Mac native and has Class Kerning, I just might ditch FontLab Studio.

Actually since I do all my drawing in Illustrator, my ideal Font authoring app would be an Illustrator plugin.

[Der FontMeister]

I love the idea of an AI plug-in font editor! This would be perfect -too bad nobody in the industry gives a dang! But your suggestion is very forward-looking. Perhaps we will design fonts by hologram someday?

Jimmy G.

[dse]

Drawing the glyphs is only part of the battle, tho it is a major part.  Behind the scenes is a lot of boilerplate that makes a font work.  Tables for kerning, for metrics, unicode character names and code-points, character encoding, Macintosh key-mapping, whatever corresponds to that last for windoze and unix. 

Then the really hard one, the one that makes the real difference between type 3 and type one fonts -hinting.

Even the best hinting algorythms wont help unless the work in the drawing phase was deliberate and accurate.