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FontLab 7 Release Notes: Part 5»

Bug fixes»
Table of Contents

Bug Fixes»

  • In the Classes panel, filtering tags by glyph name works as expected now.

  • In the Add Element Reference dialog, positioning of the added element reference works correctly for all elements.

  • When you copy-paste between fonts a glyph that has multiple Unicode codepoints assigned, FontLab preserves all codepoints. Previously, the pasted glyph only had the first codepoint.

  • FontLab now correctly updates the Layers & Masters panel after you undo pasting glyphs in the Font window cells.

  • When you add or remove glyphs, FontLab now instantly updates the list of glyphs in the Metrics panel.

  • Pasting text in the Preview panel is fixed and shows text correctly.

  • On Windows, you can no longer assign Shift1, Shift2 as custom shortcuts. This was causing problems. The app now behaves the same way on both platforms.

  • When you drag a sidebearing and you make the Glyph window scroll, the viewport no longer jumps back to its previous location.

  • Updating of linked metrics has been improved.

  • When creating a new master as interpolation of other masters, FontLab preserves the linked glyph metrics if they are defined identically in the interpolated masters. Otherwise FontLab calculates and writes the interpolated glyph metrics.

  • Drawing tools snap to guidelines as expected even if bitmap image is present on the same layer.

  • In Font Info > Instances, the minus shaped Remove button deletes all selected instances.

  • FontLab no longer shows bad preview of open contours with stroke width applied.

  • Breaking a contour at a node with the smart corner no longer corrupts the contour and allows further editing.

  • The Tools > Actions > Add Smart Corners operation no longer crashes when applied to all glyphs and all masters.

  • When you copy-paste an element with element guides linked to nodes FontLab no longer unlinks nodes.

  • When you click a predefined instance in the Instances list of the Variations panel, the list selects the instance and the Variations panel immediately chooses its location as the current dynamic instance. When you move a slider, the list deselects the predefined instance. This worked unreliably.

  • When you decompose a glyph or unlink an element reference, the Elements panel now correctly updates the number of references.

  • The Classes panel no longer lets you create more than one class with the same name.

  • When you change the Power Brush shape in the Brush panel, the Preview panel now updates its contents instantly.

  • When you replace an element with another, FontLab now always places the new element at the same position as the replaced element.

  • The problem with selecting “flat” elements containing single vertical or horizontal vector is now fixed.

  • When you have multiple glyphs in a Glyph window, you select some or all nodes of the current glyph and copy, FontLab no longer copies contours that were selected in other glyphs. This resolves an issue where contours were pasted into glyphs several times.

  • When you’ve made some edits to a feature definition in the Features panel editor and you press CmdS to save your font, FontLab no longer reverts those edits.

  • When you invert the selection with Shift or when you select with marquee, FontLab no longer selects handles of unselected nodes even if Preferences > Editing > Marquee selection ignores handles is on.

  • When you turn on Auto Layer, you can now correctly Undo this operation.

  • When FontLab removes overlaps during export, it no longer incorrectly moves certain points by one font unit

  • FontLab on Windows no longer excessively consumes memory on some operations.

  • When you created a guide, FontLab would sometimes assign some default tags to it. This no longer happens.

  • When opening .designspace files, FontLab no longer uses the Style Name attribute to distinguish the masters, which resulted in occasional failure to load some UFO masters.

  • FontLab no longer exports composite glyphs into color OpenType+SVG fonts incorrectly, with accents shifted or missing base components.

  • Font > Generate Names and Font > Generate Unicodes are now available when in the Glyph window.

  • In the Matchmaker tool, the matching red/green Status is now updated instantly when reordering contours in Elements panel.

  • Undo for the Autospace (;) operation no longer corrupts metrics in composites containing the autospaced glyph.

  • The Font > Add Suffix to Name operation renames glyphs in features, glyph recipes and in composite glyphs.

  • FontLab no longer crashes after Font > Update Glyphs.

  • When the button Reset location to default is clicked in the Variations panel, the blue dot indicating the location of the virtual instance in the design space automatically moves to the default location defined for the design axes.

  • Font > Generate Names and Font > Generate Unicodes are now available when in the Glyph window.

  • In the Glyph window, making the current glyph an auto layer no longer hides anchors if they were set visible.

  • The BkSp key no longer disables the search in the / dialog used for quick access to glyphs by their names.

  • When generating glyphs using the extended syntax, mirroring the first component horizontally no longer causes the second component glyph unexpectedly shift to the right.

  • When printing a variable font from the Glyph window FontLab no longer prints text in extremely small size.

  • Calculation and rounding of linked metrics is improved to exclude contours distortion.

  • When Font window has an Encoding filter, certain glyphs cells are no longer errorneously shown twice.

  • Matchmaker tool: show intermediate shows the proper number of intermediate contours now.

  • Matchmaker tool: the status red dot becomes green on the Property bar as soon as masters become compatible after clicking Match Masters or Clean Up Masters.

  • Undoing the selected contour move no longer unlinks hints.

  • The auto layer recipe in the Property bar is now in synch with one in the Layers&Masters panel and both are updated correctly when the other changes.

  • When glyphs are selected in Font window List sidebar, and the List sidebar has focus, various menu items such as Edit > Delete were disabled. This is fixed now so that the same menu items are enabled when List sidebar has focus and the Table has focus.

  • A few issues in variable fonts import have been fixed.

  • Undo for adding a glyph tag is fixed.

  • The Contour > Align operation no longer produces fractional coordinates for nodes when the Round when Editing setting is on.

  • The Generate Glyphs dialog no longer creates glyphs for the current master only if All Masters is selected.

  • The Generate Glyphs dialog no longer creates empty glyphs instead of adding components according to the “alias.dat” glyph creation database.

  • You no longer need to click twice the button that automatically generates Typographic Style name in Font Info > Names to produce correct results.

  • When FontLab creates an auto-glyph by reversing the existing one with zero advance width the auto-glyph doesn’t get non-zero width unexpectedly.

  • Anchor and Guides with expressions: now, anchors and guides with positions defined by expressions (like width/2) will update correct in all masters of a variable font.

  • When the Glyphs Bar is turned on in one of the Glyph window modes, switching to that mode temporarily by holding Cmd or A, M, K keys works as expected now since the Glyphs Bar doesn’t “steal” the focus anymore.

  • The operation Element > Element Reference > Add Element Reference can be undone now.

  • Undoing of contour editing operations doesn’t reset master sliders positions in the Variations panel.

  • It is now possible to undo the Clear Global Mask operation.

  • Undoing contour editing operations doesn’t switch the Preview panel from showing active master to showing virtual instance.

  • Linked metrics in auto glyphs are correctly updated now when switching between masters.

  • When Edit > Edit Across Glyphs and View > Show > Curvature are on, FontLab now always shows curvature for all inactive glyphs in the Glyph window.

  • FontLab no longer causes excessive memory usage when using dynamic instances, and in some other cases.

  • When changing the font UPM value and scaling glyphs and metrics, FontLab scales blue zones properly now.

  • When opening .glyphs files, FontLab no longer changes the order of the OpenType feature definitions.

  • Conversion of nested components to element references on import from .glyphs is fixed.

  • When you switch to the Mask layer (CtrlH) and then clear it (Tools > Clear Mask, CmdK) FontLab now switches to the correct parent layer.

  • The Import button in the dialog allowing to edit Pairs & Phrases now imports from the selected text files as expected.

  • The Auto Layer toggle state in the Font menu is updated correctly when switching between layers.

  • When you open a font, Font Info > Masters now always picks a default master (indicated by a blue circle). Previously, some fonts did not have an indication which master is default.

  • Undo for Font > Detect Composites and Font > Detect Element References is fixed.

  • FontLab no longer creates invisible Sticker elements.

  • Edit > Paste now works when the focus is in the Layers & Masters panel. It did nothing before until you click in the Glyph window.

  • Renaming glyphs with suffix using Font > Rename Glyphs > Suffix checks for duplicate names and no longer produces several glyphs with the same name.

  • After using File > Save, the Layers & Masters panel might show the current glyph selected in the Font window even though the Glyph window is active. The panel is now always in synch with the active window.

  • In a multiple master font, anchors using font metrics in their expressions get correct positions now.

  • Pasting the kerning value in the Property bar field using CtrlV doesn’t create exception glyph-to-class or glyph-to-glyph pair (Windows only issue).

  • When you switch to a Mask layer (CtrlH), the masters switcher in the Glyph window Property bar no longer highlights the other masters red if the contents of the Mask does match the masters. Mask is a service layer, so it doesn’t participate in interpolation and should not be checked for compatibility.

  • The Preview panel now correctly updates its contents when you turn off Echo Text or Features there.

  • Tools > Action > Bold/Change Weight no longer incorrectly moves anchors.

  • When you edit some text in the settings within File > Profiles… or File > Export Font As… > Customize… and you scroll, your edits are no longer rejected.

  • FontLab 7 on the Mac now correctly registers the font file types that it can open to macOS, so you can drag-drop these fonts to FontLab’s dock icon or, in Finder, choose Open With. Previously, the list of supported file types that FontLab registered to the system was inconsistent.

  • After you open one font, and then another but don’t click the window of the 2nd font, and you immediately initiate some actions from the keyboard, FontLab occasionally performed the actions on the first font, rather than on the most recently opened. This no longer happens.

  • After copying glyphs from font A, appending them to font B, and then reverting, the contents of the copied glyphs in font A is no longer removed.

  • The FontLab installer for Windows now lets you install Python in a folder that has spaces in its path.

  • When you the current Glyph window font with the property bar font dropdown or the Fonts panel, the Features list in the Glyph window sidebar is updated correctly.

  • When you export a font using the DesignSpace+UFO profile, FontLab writes the .designspace file into the target folder, but it no longer completely replaces the pre-existing masters subfolder where it writes the master .ufo packages. Instead, it keeps the masters subfolder and its contents — so when you export several fonts as DesignSpace+UFO into the same folder, you get all UFOs in the masters subfolder, and not just those that were exported last.

  • The list of font guidelines in Font Info > Guidelines is sorted alphabetically. When copy-pasting font information in Font Info, FontLab always keeps the sorting in the list of guidelines.

  • When you use a glyph name in feature definitions that is identical to a reserved keyword of the FEA language, you need to prefix the glyph name with a \, e.g. \sub or \mark. When FontLab generates FEA classes from FontLab classes or tags, it now correctly prefixes the glyph name caret in addition to other names that were previously correctly prefixed.

  • When you run Glyph > FontAudit Glyphs in Font window, FontLab finds FontAudit problems in the current layer of the selected glyphs. Te red FontAudit problem indicators in the top-right corner of the glyph cells, and the FontAudit panel now get correctly updated when you switch masters.

  • When you add an Empty master in Font Info, kerning is no longer copied from the current master. Instead, the new master gets no kerning pairs.

  • When Hide unfiltered glyphs is on in Font window and you choose some filters in the Sidebar, the current glyph may change (if the old current glyph is no longer within the filter). Now the Layers & Masters panel also gets updated to show the new current glyph.

  • The Font window Search field is fixed to allow searching by Color Flag again.

  • Some elements cannot be deleted. Under no particular condition, sometimes an unlocked element cannot be deleted except by using the Delete button in Elements panel. This was fixed now.

  • TrueType autohinting no longer fails to hint some glyphs in imported VFB files, so that glyphs in exported OpenType TT (.ttf) fonts no longer disappear at some PPM sizes.

  • The Rename Glyphs dialog opens with the New name field selected so you can immediately type a new name.

  • The glyphs Ohook and ohook no longer get an incorrect Unicode. They were ambiguously assigned two different Unicodes in standard.nam, this is now fixed.

  • When you try to detach a stem by marquee-selecting it with the Scissors tool, the contour would occasionally get corrupted. This is fixed.

  • When you Edit > Paste Glyphs or Edit > Duplicate on some glyphs and those glyphs get renamed, components in other glyphs that point to those renamed glyphs are now updated correctly.

  • When Preferences > Variations > Insert Node is on and you perform Edit > Duplicate on a node, the node also gets duplicated on matching masters.

  • When you switch from a Font window to an undocked Glyph window, the contents of the Layers & Masters and the Elements panels is updated correctly.

  • After you click a node or handle, it becomes selected and you can immediately moved it with arrow keys. FontLab no longer incorrectly moves the previously selected point instead of the current one.

  • When FontLab opens a VFB with “imported” encoding, the Font window shows glyphs without a Unicode codepointin the correct glyph cells.

  • In the Kerning mode, it’s now possible to undo a kerning pair change after Autokern (;).

  • The File > Export Font Font As dialog, the destination Source no longer gets disabled after you export the font in Masters mode and want to export it again.

  • When saving as VFC or VFJ, FontLab no longer removes everything after the first dot from the filename, so you can use filenames like 103.MyFont.2fm-1v1.vfc.

  • FontLab will not create incorrect tangent nodes when closing paths.

  • On Windows, typing special characters using Right AltKey and Right AltShiftKey combinations in the Glyph window and in the Preview panel is fixed again.

  • When you dynamically select an instance in the Variations panel and then click Add as Master, FontLab no longer resets the font’s Family Name to blank.

  • It was possible to occasionally paste contours into the element containing bitmap image. This is not possible anymore. FontLab creates new element with pasted contours instead.

  • The export profile renamed in the Customize Profile dialog box shows its new name correctly in the list of profiles of the Export Font dialog box.

  • On Windows, the crash on scrolling glyphs in the Add Glyphs dialog box is fixed.

  • After you activate FontLab with a serial number, the app immediately obtains full functionality. Previously, it was running in limited demo mode until you restarted the app.

  • In FontLab, you can customize the tolerance of curve conversion between PostScript and TrueType curves in Preferences > Curve Conversion. In a custom export profile, you can choose Conversion tolerance: Current, as in Preferences or you can choose one of three presets: Loose (tolerance 64.5), Medium (tolerance 5.5) or Precise (tolerance 1.5). These presets worked when exporting to “static” formats, but the Variable TT profile ignored this setting and always used the tolerance set in preferences. Now, you can make a custom profile based on Variable TT and choose one of the Conversion tolerance presets, and they will be used.

  • Crash on closing the main window with some particular fonts is fixed.

  • Undo works for the Add Layer operation correctly.

  • FontLab no longer crashes when you click the Power Brush presets dropdown in Glyph window property bar

  • FontLab no longer fails to export fails due to superfluous map entries in the DesignSpace file

  • Crash on using Reverse Contour under some circumstances is fixed.

  • Crash on adding a Smart Corner under some circumstances is fixed (Win only bug).

  • Layers & Masters panel: You can now Cmd-click the Service column heading to turn on all layers into service layers (i.e. layers that, when set to visible, are not shown in the glyph preview, and are not exported), or to turn all layers except Mask layers back into design layers (i.e. non-service layers). Previously, this worked unreliably.

  • Undo after moving metrics guidelines. Undo command was not available after moving a font metrics guideline, like ascender or x-height. It is fixed now.

  • The old term problem of restoring panels and toolbars after using the macOS system Hide feature (CmdH) is fixed now.

  • No crash when closing the Text frame on the Sketchboard while the Contour tool is active.

  • On Windows, FontLab might crash on font export if no Python 2.7 is installed. This is fixed now.

  • On macOS El Capitan, browsing in the Metrics table using the ⇥ key might crash FontLab. Fixed now.

  • Crash when using Power Brush while no glyph is active was fixed.

  • FontLab failed to enable the “round” buttons on the main Toolbar when the glyph was opened in the existing Glyph window. This is fixed now.

  • “Invalid master path” error in the variable TTF export is fixed in a 64-bit version for Windows.

  • Select All might crash under some rare circumstances. This is fixed now.

  • Remove Overlap did not work for some contours. This is fixed.

  • Repeating adding custom stylistic set names doesn’t anymore mess up names on export.

  • When All masters is selected in the Generate Glyphs dialog, FontLab now correctly fills all masters of the generated glyphs.

  • When opening some Indic TT fonts that do not use glyph names, FontLab now builds glyph names more correctly using OpenType features, so glyph names such as uni0A95_uni0ACD_uni0A95 will be generated rather than _350.

  • When one of the masters is excluded from interpolation and you include it in Font Info > Masters by turning interpolation on, FontLab won’t crash anymore if the master is incompatible.

  • When Glyph window gets focus, the Glyph panel and others are correctly updated to show the current glyph’s information.

  • The Font Info panel correctly updates its values on master switch.

  • Undo for the Element > Image > Autotrace operation is fixed.

  • FontLab correctly updates the preview in the Glyph cells after making auto-layers.

  • Slanted guidelines have both x and y coordinates when exported to UFO3 according to the specification.

  • Grouping two elements, undoing, and trying to group again resulted in a crash. This is fixed now.

  • The Match Masters command might delete components from the composite glyph making it empty. This is fixed now.

  • In the Glyph window, the hexagon below the glyph image where glyph width is shown is now fully clickable.

  • UFO3 export: FontLab no longer adds anchors inherited from base glyphs into composite glyphs when exporting to UFO3.

  • Manually reordering elements in the Elements panel is much easier now.

  • Undo for changing the Smart Corner radius right in the Glyph window canvas is fixed.

  • It is not possible to make element references across layers anymore. That was occasionally possible through the context menu.

  • FontLab again correctly re-creates anchors when importing OpenType fonts. This was broken in v6.1.4.

  • Undoing adding element reference doesn’t revert a number of previous operations anymore.

  • Pasted anchors are now selected to allow moving them with the keyboard immediately.

  • In the Glyph window, sidebearing lines are correctly updated after pasting a contour in a glyph with bound sidebearings.

  • The issue with MATH table export is fixed.

  • After pasting anchors using Edit > Paste they are selected making it easier to adjust anchors’ position after pasting.

  • The “minus” button in the Anchors&Pins panel was always disabled. This is fixed now.

  • The Generate Glyphs dialog box is not expanded to exceed the screen width when a long string is pasted.

  • When Edit Across Elements is on, Edit > Undo correctly reverts editing operations both for active and inactive elements.

  • Crash in the Elements panel under some circumstances is fixed.

  • After pasting a contour in a composite glyph the contour stroke might get out of synch with the fill and nodes. This is fixed now.

  • The Layers & Masters panel doesn’t scroll the list of layers to the currently selected layer when you change attributes of other layers.

  • The minimal size of the Variations panel is reduced and the scrollbars appear when expected now.

  • In the Glyph window, the scrollbars might not appear when they should when resizing the Glyph window.

  • When FontLab automatically generated zones, it did so separately for uppercase and lowercase letters, which could lead to overlapping zones in unicase fonts. FontLab will now no longer add zones if they would overlap with pre-existing zones.

  • FontLab no longer silently steps back in History when you switch to another app and back

FontLab 7 Release Notes»

  1. General, editing, anchors, actions, FontAudit, copy-paste

  2. Metrics, kerning, Font window, Font Info, hints, guides, classes

  3. Variation, imported artwork, components, auto layers, elements

  4. Glyph names, OT features, text, layers, color, files, UI, Python, varia

  5. Bug fixes