
Crossfont: Easy-to-use font editor for Mac - threcius
http://www.pixelegg.me/crossfont
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dmerfield
Note that there is a powerful and stable font editor called FontForge, widely
used by professional type designers, which happens to be GPL-licensed:

[https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/](https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/)

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jfk13
True; but it's perhaps worth noting that FontForge can have a fairly steep
learning curve. There may be a place for a significantly easier tool for
casual users, if it finds a different balance between power/flexibility and
simplicity.

I don't know whether Crossfont gets that right - I haven't tried it - but I
can imagine the market niche may well exist.

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dmerfield
I'm sceptical but more than happy to be wrong. Fonts are surprisingly
complicated software and my suspicion is that the market of people who
casually want to make them is small.

If someone interested in learning how to make fonts asked me for advice, I'd
recommend he invest his time in FOSS software rather than proprietary tools
which can (and do) fold and disappear. I've worked through FontForge's
Beginners' guide and I'd recommend it to people with even a minor interest in
type. You'll learn a lot beyond how to use the software itself:

[http://designwithfontforge.com/en-
US/index.html](http://designwithfontforge.com/en-US/index.html)

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setr
Personally, I would be interested in _editing_ fonts, though I have little
interest in making one from scratch; eg I like the idea of firacode ligatures,
but I don’t care for the entire font (and not all of the ligature designs).

I imagine its too little to bother with picking up font forge, but an MS paint
of fonts would be justifiable.

More specifically, I probably have a number of _one-off_ usecases where a
simple, shitty editor would be ideal; another example is that I like ascii
diagram characters but I have yet to find a font that does _all_ of them well.
When using something like latex or monodraw, where I’ll eventually render an
image of the text, a half-implented font of 12 characters that can only be
built as postscript type 1 with an potentially infinitely recursive ligature
definition _would be exactly what I’m looking for_ , and a simple font
designer probably gets me 90% of the way there

But I’m probably not a big market either

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blacksmith_tb
I noticed this in the FAQ:

"Why I get[sic] "Crossfont.app can’t be opened because it is from an
unidentified developer." while open Crossfont?"

Maybe it's just me, but commercial macOS software really seems like it should
be signed... especially if it isn't installed via the App Store.app (I can
understand not wanting to give Apple the cut of the proceeds, but not
expecting your customers to jump through those hoops...).

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jacobolus
What distinguishes this from the many other font editors out there?

The main differences I can see are that this one does not have many features,
and is much cheaper.

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thejohnconway
So... that seems like a useful distinction. I would consider dabbling in font
design, but there’s no way I would but an expensive application for it, and
I’d want it to be fairly simple.

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slantyyz
Back when I was on Mac, I used Glyphs Mini[1] - it wasn't the cheapest, but it
had a nice UI, did what I needed as a non-expert, and was much cheaper than
the "full" version.

[1] [https://glyphsapp.com/glyphs-mini](https://glyphsapp.com/glyphs-mini)

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lostgame
This website’s presentation leaves a bit to be desired. It’s very awkward on
mobile.

