Orientation and the Nature of Fonts

Making a font combines visual design with decisions about how the font is stored, identified, and used. This chapter establishes the working environment and vocabulary for that work. It begins with installation and help, then explains the relationship between text and the forms a font supplies to display it.

From there, you can create or open a font, give it a consistent identity, and preserve its editable source. The interface articles introduce the windows, panels, commands, and value controls used throughout the manual. Together, these sections give you the file-handling habits and application context needed before you begin drawing.

Setup and Orientation

Get FontLab running, understand how to use the manual, and find help when you need it.

Introduction

An introduction to FontLab’s capabilities, the manual’s organization, and the conventions used in its explanations and procedures.

Installation and Setup

Install FontLab, start a trial or activate a license, manage updates, and work with multiple installed versions.

Help and Support

Use Quick Help and the Help panel, find documentation, and prepare useful problem reports and feature requests.

About Fonts

Establish the vocabulary of digital fonts: characters, glyphs, font data, families, and variable designs.

Fonts and Encodings

Distinguish characters from glyphs, understand character encoding, and identify glyphs by name, codepoint, and index.

Font Structures

Understand the drawings, measurements, text-layout rules, and hinting information that a font contains.

Fonts and Font Families

Relate typefaces, families, and individual fonts; understand style linking and the basic idea of a variable font.

Working with Fonts

Create, open, name, save, and close fonts while keeping editable working data distinct from delivery files.

Understanding Font Formats

Choose working, interchange, and production formats, and distinguish opening, saving, and exporting a font.

Creating and Opening Fonts

Create a font, open existing files or installed fonts, and keep track of the current font among open documents.

Naming Fonts and Families

Set family and style names, inspect derived names, and assign a font’s role within a style-linked group.

Saving and Closing Fonts

Preserve working data in VFC or VFJ, manage saves and backups, recover autosaved work, and close fonts deliberately.

The FontLab Interface

Find your way around windows, panels, menus, dialogs, and the controls used throughout FontLab.

Windows, Panels, and Workspaces

Recognize the roles of windows, panels, and workspaces, and understand which working context their controls describe.

Arranging Windows and Panels

Arrange tabs and windows, dock panels, and identify where keyboard focus directs an action.

Menus, Dialogs, and Controls

Find commands, work with dialogs and widgets, and enter or calculate values in numeric controls.