
Glyphr - HTML5 based font editor - darrenkopp
http://glyphrstudio.com/
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DigitalSea
This is without-a-doubt, the most useful and coolest thing I've seen hit the
Hacker News homepage this year. Seriously, this is amazing. It works really
well and is easy to use as well, you could be onto something here. It's seeing
people create things like this that motivate me more than any, "Why you should
switch to Google Go" article ever could.

~~~
glyphrstudio
Thank you! It's a work in progress, but it's fun to work on something you're
passionate about. I'd recommend it :-)

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jeswin
If you make this fully featured, this might spawn an entire generation of font
designers (for good or bad :)). Also think about people people forking fonts
like on github.

This is magic, congrats.

~~~
dlau1
Played around with it, incredibly easy to use!

It looks like the bits to import/export the fonts in a portable format (json)
are already in place. You could literally run a git repo with the font files
and serve it up to a web interface. That would be awesome :D

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nacs
Free and open source too:
[https://github.com/mattlag/GLYPHR](https://github.com/mattlag/GLYPHR)

Nice work!

~~~
mkl
Not quite - there doesn't seem to be a license mentioned anywhere.

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TkTech
Couldn't find anything either, made a ticket
([https://github.com/mattlag/GLYPHR/issues/26](https://github.com/mattlag/GLYPHR/issues/26))

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jbeja
You are amazing, "A designer who teach himself to code by making beautiful and
awesome apps" best post of the day. But yeah the code is ... but the UI and
the concept itself is beautiful ;). Keep improving and good luck.

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ctidd
Wow. As an typography enthusiast who's miserable with bezier curves, I've
_never_ seen something this straightforward. I love the coordinates it gives
you on handles and points. Being able to easily work from metrics forward is a
great touch as well.

I gave up on trying to learn with Fontlab's TypeTool because nothing was
nearly as clear or usable as this.

This is the perfect entrance to type design, and I see myself wasting a lot of
my time with this in the coming weeks.

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sogen
Wow, and it's free. One suggestion: make the handlebar points a little bit
larger, or increase their "hotarea". Hope I explained myself. Great work!

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jfoster
Am I missing something, or does it only support the ASCII character set?

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jacobolus
You should definitely consider adding support for drawing using Raph Levien’s
Spiro curves: [http://www.levien.com/spiro/](http://www.levien.com/spiro/)

Much much better than Beziers for many purposes.

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davelab6
need to be gpl for that ;)

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jacobolus
Or I’m sure it would be possible to email Raph and work something out.

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davelab6
Its not ;)

But there is a js version on
[http://fontly.com/sandbox/spiro.html](http://fontly.com/sandbox/spiro.html)

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liyanage
This is great, and I love how they got some UI things exactly right, such as
zoom with the mouse wheel, and pan with the space bar held down, including
visual feedback for the tool switch.

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doorhammer
This looks really nice. The demo seems slick so far, though I've never had any
experience with font-design. I've always wanted to mess around with it a
little more, but it hasn't been very convenient.

Interested to see what folks have to say who have used professional tooling.

Also glad they have the sandboxed online try-out to mess with:
[http://glyphrstudio.com/sandbox/](http://glyphrstudio.com/sandbox/)

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ttflee
Amazing but it seems that there is an obvious bug in handling scroll events.

I am using Magic Track Pad in Safari so there is no visible drag-able scroll
bar in the attribute panel. When I scroll the attribute panel, the scroll
events just escaped the attribute panel and cause the glyph to scale. I must
concede that the scaling is smooth and responsive, rendering this behavior
quite funny but delightful.

Also, it would be more amazing if unicode were supported.

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97-109-107
I personally liked when there used to be a barrier to entry for designing
(horrible) fonts. Nonetheless, this is quite a feat, wow. There are other
contenders too, there is: [http://www.prototypo.io/](http://www.prototypo.io/)
[http://www.metaflop.com/](http://www.metaflop.com/)

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jonahx
This is a gorgeous UI. I'd love to hear about the technologies used in
building it.

~~~
gulbrandr
Here is the source code:
[https://github.com/mattlag/GLYPHR](https://github.com/mattlag/GLYPHR)

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jamestomasino
Is there a method to import a TTF or OTF font to start from? I've done a lot
of work on a personal font I use, but I'd love to see how it plays out in
Glyphr. Recreating it from scratch seems like a big ordeal.

~~~
stan_rogers
TTX will export OpenType to XML as well as convert the resulting XML to OTF.

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crazygringo
Wow, the "linked shapes" feature is something I've wanted in a font editor for
a _long_ time. Is this the first font editor with something like that, or has
it been done before?

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davelab6
Its part of the TrueType specification from Apple in 1987, which calls them
'components' \- they are in all modern font editors.

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mo9329
There are two additional on-line font editors:

FontStruct - build a face with pre-defined blocks, uses Flash, proprietary,
sponsored by FontShop. 6 years old.

[http://fontstruct.com/](http://fontstruct.com/)

typism - development history and novel path drawing, uses SVG+JS, MIT
licensed. Fonts are distributed under OFL. 5 years old.

[http://typism.appspot.com/](http://typism.appspot.com/)

~~~
davelab6
FontStruct is proprietary flash.

Typism is dead, no one worked on it for ages.

[http://prototypo.io](http://prototypo.io) is new, active, libre, Angular, on
github, but! it suffers from the classic problem of processing and such;
designing visual things isnt best done by writing code. Its why metafont didnt
catch on -
[https://www.google.co.in/search?q=why+metafont+didnt+catch+o...](https://www.google.co.in/search?q=why+metafont+didnt+catch+on)

That's why I help start [http://metapolator.com](http://metapolator.com) which
will become a much more powerful online font editor, because it allows you to
design typeface families instead of letters.

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louisremi
Hey dave, Currently in Prototypo, users design fonts in a visual way only.
Using code will come later, when we can make it user-friendly enough and fully
integrated in our visual editor.

Anyway, the future looks bright for open-source online type design software.
There's a little competition and many possibilities for collaboration. That
can only be good!

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lancefisher
This looks really nice, but there are a couple things I can't figure out. How
do I add new characters? How can I add new glyphs for ligatures? How do I set
kerning pairs?

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glyphrstudio
Hello, Hacker News! I've been seeing a huge response since we released Glyphr
Beta 3 earlier this week - it's been very exciting! I'm trying to answer all
the questions i'm receiving. Until then, please play with the app and let me
know if there is any feedback. Thanks!

Glyphr Studio team (aka Matt) @glyphrstudio

~~~
tripzilch
It looks beautiful and very easy to use, except for the one fact: the whole UI
is quite slow in my browser (Firefox 27 on Linux Mint). Maybe it's my laptop,
it's 2 years old, but I don't see anything on the screen warranting this
sluggishness...

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Nilzor
Since we're on Hacker News: What's the business model here? I see an awful lot
of work for a very limited market. $1000+-license after release?

In any case, _great_ job by the programmers here.

~~~
davelab6
$1,000 for a font? The average price is $20 and selling 50 copies is possible.
Sometimes more, sometimes less.

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optymizer
"Features galore" and yet, holding Shift does not restrict the cursor to only
X or Y movements for dragging in straight lines.

That said, this is a very cool project.

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arikrak
Nice editor. Though I wonder with all the font links lately, is the world
really short on fonts? Shouldn't Google fonts and the like just about cover
any need?

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themodelplumber
Google fonts is incredibly frustrating as soon as you look beyond skin-depth.
For one, it's annoying to use Google Fonts for professional work, because more
often than not the font you want to use is available in only one weight, or
it's missing an italic style, etc. So, you walk in thinking you're going to
come out with a terrific type solution for your client or project, and you
walk out realizing you are effectively being upsold by a type designer. Not
that it's a terrible thing.

Now, let's say you look at the full catalog of commercial fonts. What's
happening is a sort of acceleration of fashion. No sooner did the squared
serif font come into style than it is on its way out. People are designing new
fonts, other people are enjoying the new stuff, and the old stuff gets pushed
out (not completely, ever, but enough that your average designer starts to
really get annoyed seeing the same old fonts).

So this tool is probably a great thing--it should help boost the industry and
it will also put more downforce on the value of the same old junk that has
been around forever. So if you are really OK with standard fonts, or plan to
use free fonts forever, there should be an increase in the amount of that
stuff that is available for you to use.

This should also help commercial fonts take hold. People will start to notice
fonts more, and they will start to understand the difference between the
amount of work that goes into paid fonts vs. unpaid.

Fonts are not a solved problem by a long shot.

~~~
davelab6
Google Fonts has only single style families on purpose, to prioritize a
limited budget, so the most popular single style fonts can be improved into
families with confidence there is demand for them.

But expanding single styles into families is not as easy as it should be.
That's why I help start [http://metapolator.com](http://metapolator.com) which
takes www.metaflop.com and removes the 'write metafont code' part of the
process.

As you say, if you want the fonts to be better sooner than Google, you can pay
for it - either by commissioning the designer to improve the open source fonts
or by going across the street to a paid web font service.

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NKCSS
Very cool! Works as expected, except one arrow on the F demo didn't allow me
to change the angle (near the 2nd bar of the F), but otherwise: awesome!

~~~
davelab6
Its probably a tangent point type. Change the point type :)

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coldcode
Needs keyboard support (PC and Mac) like for undo. Also needs to support
moving objects with the mouse.

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SimeVidas
It should be possible to generate the font file in-browser (using Web Platform
tech), right?

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drhodes
The path nodes indicate direction, that's useful.

~~~
Wistar
Dealing with screwball windings with no ready way to discern their orientation
make this one thing a piece of feedback manna.

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logicbased
I joined Hacker News to just say WOW ! Cool !

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monkmartinez
This is dope. Muchas Gracias de Tucson!!

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gdiocarez
Nice, the tool is minimalistic

