FontLab Studio, TypeTool & Fontographer Mac Updates

By Thomas Phinney on 2019-04-04 in FontLab Software, FontLab Studio 5, Fontographer

We have just released Mac updates for FontLab Studio 5 (5.1.6), TypeTool (3.1.3) and Fontographer (5.2.4) to address recent macOS compatibility issues with the recent macOS 10.14.4 release, and copy/paste problems FontLab Studio and TypeTool on 10.13 and 10.14 (High Sierra and Mojave).

To download FontLab Studio or TypeTool, go to the app page link below, then scroll down to enter your email address in the form; Fontographer is a direct download:

• FontLab Studio 5
• TypeTool 3
• Fontographer 5

Detailed changes

OpenType I/O opening & export

The old FontLab core code used a system byte-reordering function for 25 years. There was a bug in our code, but in Mac OS 9, and initially in OS X, it still worked fine. We only discovered this bug after Apple changed some details in this system function in macOS 10.14.4. The Apple change was within the specs, but it exposed our bug, and FontLab Studio, Fontographer and TypeTool now couldn’t properly open or export OTFs and TTFs. This is now fixed.

This helps users of FontLab Studio, Fontographer and TypeTool on macOS 10.14.4 and newer; users of older macOS will see no change.

OS/2.averageWidth

In addition, the above change seems to fix a problem with the “averageWidth” entry in the OS/2 table, which was incorrectly saved by earlier versions.

This helps users of FontLab Studio, Fontographer and TypeTool on all macOS versions.

Copy/Paste

Our old copy-paste code was based in part on a system API, which Apple removed in macOS 10.13. We updated our code to use exclusively the newer API. Copy-paste now works correctly in the Font window and in the Glyph window. Copy-paste from/to Adobe Illustrator using the new API also works again.

This helps users of FontLab Studio, Fontographer and TypeTool on macOS 10.13 and 10.14, users of older macOS will see no change.

Progress dialog

FontLab Studio and TypeTool were using great effort to show and update the progress bar that appeared on many occasions, including during opening and exporting fonts. Opening and exporting fonts is now up to 10 times faster!

This helps users of FontLab Studio and TypeTool on all macOS versions.

Paste in panels

We improved pasting of non-ASCII text into the OpenType panel and the Edit Macro panel was improved. The text fields there were never Unicode-capable (and will not be), but pasting Unicode text in 5.1.5 was doing weird things. Now FontLab lets you paste the full range of macOS Roman (western European) characters but removes other characters.

This helps users of FontLab Studio on all macOS versions.

Tags: compatibility, Mac, macOS, update, upgrade

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Thomas Phinney

Thomas Phinney was CEO of FontLab until 2019, when he retired from FontLab to pursue his font detective work and type design. Previously he worked at Extensis (web fonts and font management tools) and Adobe (as product manager for global fonts and typography). Thomas is also a teacher, writer, and consultant on fonts and typography. He has been consulted by Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Oxford University Press, a “big three” US auto maker, the US Treasury Department, and PBS “History Detectives,” among others. He teaches type design with Crafting Type and has been a repeat guest lecturer for MA Typeface Design at the University of Reading. Since 2004 he has been a board member of ATypI, the international typography association. His typeface Hypatia Sans is an Adobe Original with over 3000 glyphs per font.