Introduction

FontLab brings drawing, spacing, testing, and font production into one working environment. This manual explains the concepts behind that work and the procedures for carrying it out, from a first drawing to the files you deliver.

About FontLab

FontLab is a professional application for type design and font engineering. Type design concerns the shapes and relationships that give letters their visual character. Font engineering turns those decisions into files that applications can use reliably. The two kinds of work meet throughout a project: a shape must work beside other shapes, and the resulting font must reproduce the intended behavior in text.

The work can begin in several places. You may draw directly in FontLab, bring in artwork made elsewhere, or open an existing font to extend or revise it. You can develop a single style or work on related styles together. Throughout that process, FontLab lets you examine both individual drawings and their appearance in text. A drawing that works on its own still needs to work at the sizes and in the combinations for which you intend it.

Type designers use FontLab to create original designs and expand existing families. Font engineers use it to prepare, inspect, and produce font files. An independent designer may carry out the whole process. In a foundry or design studio, several people may contribute drawing, spacing, language coverage, and production work. In teaching, the same environment lets students connect a visual decision with the data and behavior that implement it. The scale and division of the work change; the need to coordinate design and technical detail remains.

A project usually involves repeated comparisons rather than a single pass through a list of tools. You draw a letter, compare it with related letters, inspect the spacing in words, and revise the drawing after seeing it in context. Production brings another set of checks: whether the intended characters are available, whether text behaves correctly, and whether the delivery format suits its destination. FontLab provides the working environment for these stages; your design goals determine the choices you make within it.

This manual assumes that you are comfortable using a computer. It does not assume prior knowledge of FontLab or the terminology of type design. The opening Parts establish that vocabulary before later chapters use it to explain drawing, construction, spacing, and production. Concepts are introduced where they first become necessary, then recalled as the work develops.

If you already work with fonts, you can go directly to the stage you need. Read its explanation to understand the model behind a procedure, and follow the references when the task depends on another part of the workflow. Learning the application is not simply memorizing commands: it includes understanding what information an operation changes and how that change affects the rest of the font.

Main Features and Recent Changes

A type design develops through repeated comparisons. You refine a shape, look at it beside related shapes, and return to it after seeing the result in text. FontLab supports that movement between detail and context: you can draw and adjust curves, measure the relationships within a design, and inspect letters together while you work.

You can start with drawn outlines or develop letterforms from strokes and imported artwork. Shared shapes can be reused across a design, reducing the need to maintain repeated details separately. When you develop several styles together, FontLab provides ways to coordinate their editing and compare the results. These capabilities support both conventional font families and variable fonts, as well as designs that use color.

Spacing and testing are part of the same working process. You can judge the fit of letters in text, adjust combinations that need individual attention, and test the rules that control how text appears. Automated checks help identify technical problems for inspection. You make the design decisions; the checks provide information on which to base them.

For production, FontLab provides export settings for different delivery formats and ways to process multiple fonts. Repeated operations can be collected into actions or handled through Python scripts. The manual introduces these options at the stages where they become useful, so you can first understand the work and then decide how much of it to automate.

Recent changes

The current release adds more direct ways to inspect and adjust a drawing. The Stem tool lets you select detected strokes in a letterform and move, thicken, or rotate them. A visual curve-tension control lets you inspect and adjust the shape of selected curves. Changes to brush and thickness editing extend the ways you can develop a letterform from a stroke. The drawing workspace also brings font switching and information about the current letterform closer to the work.

Other changes concern work across related designs. Paste Special can copy selected kinds of data to the current design or across related designs. The Superkerning panel brings existing spacing adjustments for pairs of letters together with pairs drawn from a test string, so you can review and edit them in one list.

The Lookups editor provides a visual way to inspect and edit supported rules for replacing and positioning glyphs, the drawn forms used to display text. The panel also offers a debugger; its presence does not establish support for every kind of layout rule.

Aidus adds optional AI-assisted tools in beta. These include an assistant in the Chat panel, filters described in ordinary language, and generation of starting glyph drawings from visual references. FontLab also offers neural predictions for spacing and adjustments between pairs of letters. You can use FontLab's drawing and font-production tools without AI assistance. Services that require an external model have their own setup and costs.

Organization of This Manual

The manual has two volumes. They describe the same application from two useful starting points: the work you want to do and the interface element you want to understand.

Volume One: Working with FontLab follows the development of a font. It begins with setup, the nature of fonts, file handling, and the application interface. It then moves through drawing and spacing, the reuse of shapes, work across related styles, text behavior, and font production. Later chapters address automation and customization.

Within that sequence, an explanation establishes the reasons for the work, and practical guidance shows how to carry it out in FontLab. You can read both together or use the practical guidance when you already understand the subject. The explanation matters when you need to adapt a method: it gives you a basis for deciding what to change.

Volume Two: Reference is organized around FontLab's interface. Its entries describe menus, tools, panels, dialogs, and their controls. Use it when you are looking at a setting and need to know what it accepts or affects. Volume One supplies the context needed to carry out a task. Volume Two supplies the detailed behavior of individual controls. Pointers from Volume One to specific reference entries connect a workflow to its controls; reference entries point back to the relevant explanation when you need the reasons behind an operation.

Volume One has four levels of organization:

• A Movement groups a broad stage of learning and work.
• A Part brings together related chapters within that stage.
• A Chapter develops a subject or workflow.
• A Section addresses a particular aspect of that chapter.

Chapter headings name their subject directly. Short reminders provide the context needed to continue; references to a longer treatment use its title.

If you are new to FontLab and to making fonts, begin with setup and help, then the explanation of what fonts contain. Continue with opening, naming, and saving fonts, followed by the working interface. This sequence establishes the vocabulary and file-handling habits needed before drawing and font development.

If you already make fonts, use the contents to locate your task. Read the chapter's explanation when you need to understand FontLab's approach, and follow its references when a step depends on material introduced elsewhere. For a question about one control, start with Volume Two.

Manual Conventions

Interface labels appear in bold in this manual. Their spelling and capitalization follow the English interface: Help Panel names a command, while “the Help panel” refers to the panel in a sentence. Tool, panel, dialog, and window identify different parts of the interface; they are not interchangeable names.

A path such as Help > User Manual names the menu and then the command within it. Paths through Preferences identify the page, group, and setting where necessary. The surrounding sentence distinguishes choosing a command from turning an option on or off.

Keyboard shortcuts use key names joined by a plus sign. Shift+F1 means that Shift is held while F1 is pressed. “Press and hold” means to keep a key down; “press briefly” means to press and release it. A sequence of separate key presses is described in words rather than joined with plus signs.

When shortcuts differ between platforms, the manual identifies both forms in prose, parentheses, or separate table columns. When the forms appear together in a sentence, macOS comes first. Cmd means Command on macOS; Ctrl means Control. Option and Alt follow the name used for the relevant platform. A shortcut written for one platform does not imply an equivalent on the other. Platform-specific paragraphs or steps are labeled macOS or Windows; otherwise, the account applies to both.

Literal filenames, extensions, and text intended to be entered exactly appear in code style. Numbered steps describe an ordered procedure. Bullets collect items for which reading order is not a sequence of actions.

Three kinds of notice supplement the main text:

• Note adds context or a qualification relevant to the current subject.
• Tip offers an optional method or useful alternative.
• Warning identifies a consequential risk and the precaution needed before the affected action.

A warning belongs before the action it concerns. Required steps remain in the main procedure, where you can follow them in order.