Hooray! We are very pleased to announce that Glyphr Studio Version 1 has just been released! It’s live right now at glyphrstudio.com/online. Go play with it, and please let us know what you think!
What’s New?
Originally we were just going to implement Import Export OpenType Fonts for V1… but we took a not-so-little detour through the land of Components. The more we thought about it, Components was going to be a massive change to the codebase, so it was better to get it out of the way before we slapped the ‘V1’ label on Glyphr Studio. But, as a result, you can now import and export OTF / TTF files (yay!) and you can use Components.
Components
Linked Shapes were the original idea – being able define a shape once and re-use it across many glyphs. In practice this is a good idea, but it also falls very short of what is useful in real font design. Components are the super-charged version of Linked Shapes. Components can contain as many shapes as you want, and are basically stand-alone Glyphs that aren’t directly mapped to a character in the alphabet. Once you link a Component to a Glyph, you get a Component Instance. Component Instances can not only be moved, but also re-sized and flipped. Additionally, you can use any regular Glyph or Ligature as if it were a Component. Go crazy with nesting and linking!
Import and Export Fonts
This was the big feature we were waiting for, and thanks to OpenType.js – it’s here! There are some caveats – for example, Kern values and Ligatures can’t be exported at this time (You can check out details on the File Formats Help Page). But, as OpenType.js adds features, so will Glyphr Studio. It’s the beginning of a beautiful relationship!
Help & Documentation
One of the big things we did to speed up releases is to move the Help file to it’s own site: help.glyphrstudio.com. Check it out and let us know if we can improve any of the content. It’s also hosted on GitHub, so if you are GitHubSavvy, you can actually write or improve articles directly!
What’s Next?
Well, we have a lot of ideas. Please let us know what you’d like to see happen – user feedback is the main way we decide what to do next! Part of the overall changes we made in preparation for V1 will allow us to have much faster releases. Where the last few Betas took a few months to complete, we now plan to ship new features and bug fixes as soon as they are complete – maybe even monthly or weekly!
So stay tuned – and drop us a line to let us know how we’re doing!