Fontographer has long been the only game in town if you wanted to create your own downloadable PostScript fonts. When introduced in 1986, it was an impressive achievement—even with the nasty drawback of copy protection.
Altsys has now released a major new version of Fontographer, version 3.0. The package and manual have been completely redone, a few major features have been added, and scores of minor improvements have been made. There's hardly a dialog box that hasn't been touched up at least a little.
WHAT IT IS Originally, Altsys positioned Fontographer purely as a font generator. Now, in trying to reach a wider audience, Altsys is placing more emphasis on the logos and graphics you can create in specialty fonts with the program — although their tools are pretty meager.
In any case, Fontographer 3.0 keeps the basic lool and feel of the earlier versions, with the straightforward ability to edit or create designs in any of the 256 character slotsmof any PostScript font you choose. Using Bezier control points, you design the characters and then have the program create both the downloadable PostScript font and the screen fonts. You install the fonts in the normal way.
Foremost among the new features are an integrated screen-font editor, auto-tracing, and a pen tool (the 1atter is similar to those in FreeHand and Illustrator 88).
The integrated screen-font editor is a great convenience in serious font production. In the old days, Fontographer generated rough-and-ready bit-mapped screen fonts, but you couldn’t edit them (and they often needed editing) without switching to another program. Unfortunately, Altsys provides only a bare-bones bit-map editor in the new Fontographer. You get a pencil tool and a grabber, and that's it — barely enough to get by,
With the new auto-traceing feature, you can paste background images into a character cell and then have Fontographer trace it for you — providing points, curves, and fills as needed. This is a colossal time-saver if you want to convert a number of scanned images into PostScript.
The welcome pen tool conveniently combines the capabilities of tangent, corner, and curve tools into one. It relieves you of continually having to switch tools — something earlier versions made you do a lot. It seems odd, though, that Altsys, the developer of FreeHand, decided not to include a freehand drawing tool in the Fontogrupher program.
HOW IT WORKS Version 3.0 adds many features that increase productivity, such as more keyboard shortcuts, optional snap-to guidelines, better printing options, and no more copy protection.
Fontographer has always been a professional tool, capable of sophisticated jobs such as creating kerning tables and building composite fonts based on fonts already in your printer. In keeping with this heritage, version 3.0 adds the feature of including PostScript “hints” in your fonts, which can improve the look of your fonts when you print them on 300-dpi printers in small point sizes.
Overall, the new version is worth the upgrade, even though there’s still room for improvement (especially in beefing up the bit-map editor). Although the manual is improved in this version, it still suffers from a poor index, typos, and several confusing illustrations. Finally, if Altsys seriously wants buyers to use Fontographer for graphics, it needs to include better drawing tools, including a freehand drawing tool and shape tools such as boxes. Considering Altsys’ history as FreeHand’s developer, these are glaring omissions.
Valiulis, Dave. (January 1990). Fontographer 3.0. MacUser. (pgs. 75, 77).
Altsys Corporation
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
56 / 
2020-09-13 / 
5a24937a2a3b0c8b669257d108855476e3673acb / 
/ 
fontographer32_dsk.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Mini vMac
