How similar is it?

hhp

There is no way to preview strokes in FontLab - however - you can do this with Glyphs.

Cheers!

Thanks! Anyone know if Robofont can preview a stroke? I've been looking into making that purchase.

There's a Trial version of RoboFont available if you don't get an answer here.

Maybe someone who works at Commercial Type can answer this directly, but I have to imagine Marian was either built in Glyphs or they had some special python code that allowed them to preview it. Hrant -- if you're implying, "Is this going to be just another form of Marian, a hairline spine/outline form of a classic typeface?" the answer to that is no. Hopefully it will see commercial release within the year, though.

Cool. Good luck wit it.

hhp

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In Robofont, you can certainly turn off fill, but that's not really previewing a stroke.
I'd ask Frederick directly, he might know of a plugin:
@typemytype

Jason C

There is an outliner plug-in for RoboFont (free download):

http://doc.robofont.com/extensions/download-extensions/outliner/

RoboFont’s preview doesn’t work well with open paths, they are always closed automatically.

With some Python hacking skills you could probably make the Outliner plug-in to work better for this purpose.

Thanks, Jason, Mark & Jens! Outliner looks like exactly the tool I'm looking for, and it's swaying more and more towards buying RoboFont.

This is easy to do in FontLab.
In the metrics window switch it to outline view. Shift Command p on a Mac.

Thanks for the great tip, James. I wasn't aware it was possible in FontLab too.