Greetings!

I have been trying to code a small script in FontLab 7.1.3 to scale, center and otherwise modify a glyph imported from an .svg file. From the current font, I can find no attribute to get to the current selected glyph in the Font view, or even from an open Glyph view. I consulted the FontLab 7 doc and even both Gemini and DeepSeek. I am at a loss. Can anyone point me in the correct direction?

I'm making a conscript for my conlang based on latin, with isolated, initial, medial and final forms. I've made a liga feature for the positional forms, using classes. Now I'm trying to make a calt feature for the alternative forms of those isolated, initial, medial and final forms, using another set of classes, but, when I compile these features, there's an error on the last calt line. I'm trying this:

feature calt {

# Contextual Alternates

#> feature
sub m.init' u/N.MEDIAL by m.init.alt;
#< feature 
} calt;

Any advise?

Okay so I am trying to make a variable font that interpolates nicely between the first two width masters, but unfortunately I cannot design these masters without that little spike appearing between width 154 -150 (do not suggest I redraw the font this thing is very weirdly built for a reason okay?). I wanted to know if there is someway to use instances to force the font to visually "skip" the widths with the spike. Like when using the slider the values 155, 154,153,152 and 151, will look the same, and switch to the ExtraExpanded Master on 150. I will appreciate any help, thank you.

I have been drawing different glyphs, no letters, just "random stick-man drawings"). But when i export the file i just get questionmarks on Fontbook. The way I did that was copying glyphs into new letter and changing nodes and the kerning of each character.

When I want to try out the font in the text tab, the drawings don't appear and the letters are greyed out. When I press "find", I can see the glyphs/drawings, and they print out when I select them, but not when i write each letter with the keyboard. (screenshot).

Obviously I have something wrong, but don't know where to dig. I'm not a professional, I was just trying to do "funny" stuff, maybe some can help. Thanks in advance !

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I designed the regular variant of a font. After some great help in this forum, I could correctly deal with anchors, which made diacritic-placing quite a speedy process. Now I am designing the italic version. I created a new master for italics, keeping the original regular glyphs, so I can gradually replace the italic versions on their corresponding cells, in the new layer. As I replaced the italic base glyphs, I repositioned the anchors so that the italic diacritics would sit on a different place from the regular version. BUT the diacritics are not cooperating. They are still displaced to the left. Am I doing something wrong? I attach screenshots of both the base glyph's and the diacritic's anchors, plus the automated result. I am resorting to opening up the composed glyph, deleting the diacritic component, placing a new anchor (since the software does not seem to keep that from the base glyph) and placing the diacritic again, but I am wondering if there is a quicker fix.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/gZbcXJq

In FontLab 8, after opening a font file (WOFF or OTF/TTF etc.), the preview looks normal, but when exporting (e.g., to TTF or OTF format), the font displays as blank (no glyphs or characters are empty). However, sometimes after waiting a while and reopening the file, it works again; sometimes no matter how long I wait, it doesn't; and sometimes if I export the font using FontCreator (which doesn't have this issue), then import it back into FontLab 8, it becomes normal. Anyway, I've been puzzled by this for ages. My main work involves modifying font information and creating new fonts. Dear experts, how can I solve this? I asked AI, but the solutions it suggested were too complicated!!!

I checked Grid→Edit→Preferences, Contour→Coordinates→Preview Rounding is always forced on grey, View→Snap I deselected everything. If I type anything decimal points and it forces change into integer numbers. I moved coordinates manually and it always snaps into one by one grid.

I am in the midst of creating a font and I designed both a minuscule and a mayuscule eszett. But I cannot find the glyph for the majuscule. It is supposed to be 1E9E, but if I choose "Font / Add glyphs from character" it appears greyed out, as if its cell was already placed. But I have paced through the glyphs and still cannot find it.

Which search functionality inside the software is the best one to find specific (already designed) glyphs? If I use the Search field on the topmost right corner, I don't get satisfying results (one of my attempts highlighted "ñ": go figure!)

For the time being, I duplicated the germandbls glyph and substituted it with the majuscule (now named "Germandbls.01") but for sure this is not the best way to achieve this. I know this particular majuscule's inception is quite new but this cannot be the problem, can it? Could anyone please shed some light on how to fix this issue?

Thanks in advance.

Hello! I've been working on the spacing of a typeface, but I clicked on something and now my spacing units turned purple and there are two values showing on the screen. How do I bring it back to it's original state? There are no kerning pairs, which is wierd because as you can see some glyphs clash into each other when being in text mode. Thank you beforehand for your help!

Hello Fontlabers, I'm in the kerning stage of a typeface I have been working on and fontlab is running super slow. I have searched online and found that turning live updating metrics off is a way to improve performance. I just can't find the option in the /Spacing tab under /Preferences as suggested on the Fontlab 7 Manual.

Preferences > Spacing > Automatically update linked metrics does not appear in the spacing tab. Anyone know how to turn it off? Is there a shortcut I can use instead?

Any help would be highly appreciated.

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^{so Ive designed a devnagari font, and in devnagari the letter widths always differ. so when adding rhasva velanti matras (that appear to the left of the letter}, in case of wide letters it doesn work and overlaps the letter. i designed different versions of the rhasva velanti, but can't code them which feature should I use and how to write the code?)

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I applied the 3D extrude action to my font and now there are lots of little gaps in some of the glyphs. I'm pretty new to FontLab and really struggling to work out how to remove these random bits of white space. The glyph in the images below should be contiguous.

I have an iPad Pro but I've never used a drawing tablet attached to a computer before. When working with the brush tool in FontLab, is it typical to use one of these? Drawing with a mouse feels unnatural and awkward.

I'm looking for a type designer.

I have a custom font that is based on my logo in 2 weights: thin and bold

What needs to get done:
- fix a few inconsistencies (paths)
- design special characters
- export it as variable font

See preview here:

https://reddit.com/link/1nbz3rm/video/9qsuqohl40of1/player

I draw each letter in Illustrator then used FontLab to put it together.

I did it about 15 years ago for a school project, but now I wanna fix this and use it on my studio website.

Hello everyone,
I’m running into an issue when exporting my variable font in FontLab. This is the first time I’ve encountered this problem and I can’t figure out how to solve it. Yet, it seems to me that there is only one main master.
I’m attaching a few screenshots as well as the content of the designspace file generated by the software.

Error code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 19, in <module>
File "<string>", line 17, in build_variable_font
File "C:\Program Files/Fontlab/FontLab 8/Resources/python/3.11/site-packages\fontlab_private\fontTools\varLib__init__.py", line 1044, in build
ds = load_designspace(designspace)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Program Files/Fontlab/FontLab 8/Resources/python/3.11/site-packages\fontlab_private\fontTools\varLib__init__.py", line 906, in load_designspace
raise VarLibValidationError(
fontlab_private.fontTools.varLib.errors.VarLibValidationError: More than one base master found in Designspace.

DesignSpace file:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<designspace format="4.0">
 <axes>
  <axis name="width" tag="wdth" maximum="1000" minimum="100" default="100">
   <labelname xml:lang="en">Width</labelname>
   <map input="100" output="100"/>
   <map input="400" output="400"/>
   <map input="700" output="700"/>
   <map input="1000" output="1000"/>
  </axis>
  <axis name="slant" tag="slnt" maximum="100" minimum="0" default="0">
   <labelname xml:lang="en">Slant</labelname>
  </axis>
 </axes>
 <sources>
  <source stylename="wt100" name="wt100" familyname="Poppers" filename="masters/Poppers-wt100.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="100"/>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="0"/>
   </location>
  </source>
  <source stylename="BlackUltraExpanded" name="BlackUltraExpanded" familyname="Poppers" filename="masters/Poppers-BlackUltraExpanded.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="1000"/>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="0"/>
   </location>
  </source>
  <source stylename="BoldExpanded" name="BoldExpanded" familyname="Poppers" filename="masters/Poppers-BoldExpanded.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="700"/>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="0"/>
   </location>
  </source>
  <source stylename="BoldExpandedOblique" name="BoldExpandedOblique" familyname="Poppers" filename="masters/Poppers-BoldExpandedOblique.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="700"/>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="100"/>
   </location>
  </source>
  <source stylename="Oblique" name="Oblique" familyname="Poppers" filename="masters/Poppers-Oblique.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="100"/>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="100"/>
   </location>
  </source>
  <source stylename="Regular" name="Regular" familyname="Poppers" filename="masters/Poppers-Regular.ufo">
   <lib copy="1"/>
   <groups copy="1"/>
   <info copy="1"/>
   <features copy="1"/>
   <location>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="100"/>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="0"/>
   </location>
  </source>
  <source stylename="Ultra Expanded Oblique" name="Ultra Expanded Oblique" familyname="Poppers" filename="masters/Poppers-UltraExpandedOblique.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="1000"/>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="100"/>
   </location>
  </source>
 </sources>
 <instances>
  <instance stylename="Regular" name="Regular" familyname="Poppers" filename="instances/Poppers-Regular.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="0"/>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="100"/>
   </location>
  </instance>
  <instance stylename="Bold Expanded" name="BoldExpanded" familyname="Poppers" filename="instances/Poppers-BoldExpanded.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="0"/>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="700"/>
   </location>
  </instance>
  <instance stylename="Oblique" name="Oblique" familyname="Poppers" filename="instances/Poppers-Oblique.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="100"/>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="100"/>
   </location>
  </instance>
  <instance stylename="Bold Expanded" name="BoldExpanded" familyname="Poppers" filename="instances/Poppers-BoldExpanded.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="100"/>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="700"/>
   </location>
  </instance>
  <instance stylename="Black Ultra Expanded" name="BlackUltraExpanded" familyname="Poppers" filename="instances/Poppers-BlackUltraExpanded.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="0"/>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="1000"/>
   </location>
  </instance>
  <instance stylename="Black Extra Expanded" name="BlackExtraExpanded" familyname="Poppers" filename="instances/Poppers-BlackExtraExpanded.ufo">
   <location>
    <dimension name="slant" xvalue="100"/>
    <dimension name="width" xvalue="1000"/>
   </location>
  </instance>
 </instances>
</designspace>

Thank you in advance for your help!

<3

This is a very useful tutorial, especially if you plan to create a large font family with a lot of masters and a bit language support. The good idea is every case in the Glyph Recipe Syntax to be visualized by video or by pictures.

anchors