I understand that Glyphs Mini should lack the pro stuff from Glyphs, and that means Glyphs Mini has “limited OpenType functionality”. But that’s for creating fonts I hope. If I open an existing OpenType font, and add a few accented characters and export a new font, I hope this font isn’t limited in ways the original font wasn’t. Could someone please confirm this?
Thanks!
The OpenType features are not imported from existing fonts. All features are always regenerated and thous the limitations applies. Sorry.
Bugger.
So … what info is lost then?
I’m not a font designer, I just need an editor to add missing Swedish characters to fonts (occasionally), and usually just to edit font families into proper families (so they’re one entry in the font menus, with all the family fonts in a submenu) and converting TrueType to OpenType and stuff like that.
But if Glyphs Mini ruins all OpenType fonts when I edit them (or rather when I import them), this is something I for one would have liked to have seen as a warning sticker somewhere.
So … I really have to go for the full version of Glyphs or the equally expensive Fontographer just to make slight adjustments to existing OpenType fonts?
Or does anyone here know of a way to achieve these types of changes without a full-blown font editor? I heard Fontographer used to come with a separate tool for merging font families only, which would have been great for that task, only it doesn’t seem to be available anymore (at least not for OS X Lion).
But even if there is a tool for merging families, or editing the font naming info, I’d still occasionally have the need to add swedish characters to certain OpenType fonts … and the only way to do that without ruining the fonts is to buy Glyphs (pro) or Fontographer then (at least they’re the only ones in the App Store)?
Importing open type features as they where is quite complicated and not always possible. So I took this route to not import them and try to generate them from the glyph names.
Fontographer does not import any features, either. So you would need to use Glyphs or FontLab.
I used to use FontLab but it doesn’t work on Lion, but you’re saying the full version of Glyphs does import and export OpenType properly then?
But I’d still like to know exactly what OT stuff is lost when I open and export OT fonts in Glyphs Mini.
Are all glyphs still there? All kerning? Do I lose the OT capitals, or the OT ligatures? Or do I only lose more advanced features, or what?
I’d really like to see some sort of list of what’s supported in Glyphs Mini, and what’s only supported in Glyphs. If you don’t have such a list, I’m sure other customers would also like to be able to find this info on your website and in the manuals.
Cheers!
I’m working on a new website for weeks now, but this takes much longer then I thought. I will update the website soon.
To answer you question, please see the thread “Glyphs vs Glyphs Mini” in the forum.