At Typo Berlin 2004, an early preview version of FontLab Studio 5 was announced. The software will most likely be released in Autumn this year, first for Windows and subsequently, for MacOS X. We have not decided yet whether the software will be available on MacOS 9.

Regards,
Adam Twardoch
Fontlab Ltd.

Thanks Adam.

Studio 5? Does FL upgrade considerably?
I'm looking forward to see FL Studio5.

Stephen.
>Hot dog! I hope FL will spend their time getting the Mac version
>out as soon as possible rather than working to make it OS 9 compatible.

I hope so too. But as for my Mac being too old, OSX does not run satisfactorily. Therefore, If FL5 is not available in OS9 ,I would like to purchase FL4.6.
Some day,I bought new Mac, I will be going to upgrade FLStudio5 immediately.

Kunihiko -

I have mixed feelings about FL under OS 9.
I used 4.5 and 4.6 under OS9 up until this past December.
A new machine was a small fortune but FL was crashing around
10 times a day so I finnaly switched. Also, some features like
Anchors will not work with the OS9 version.
The metrics window seems to be smoother under X too.

For those interested in FontLab Studio 5, I've uploaded the PDF of the presentation I showed at Typo Berlin 2004. Please note that this reflects a preview version status (not even beta), so features may change:
http://www.twardoch.com/download/typoberlin2004_fontlab5.pdf

Regards,
Adam Twardoch
Fontlab Ltd.

Adam, nice little presentation. Do you know how much the upgrade will be? Does it depend how recently somebody bought 4.6?

hhp

Adam, on page 3 of your presentation you have

'1996 FontLab 2.5 Type 1 editing '

but I was using FontLab in 1994.

Oh, was it version 2.5? I need to check the factual data with Yuri, thanks for pointing this out

Adam

<font class="dontLookLikeCrap">This new version of FontLab looks exciting. To bad Windows before Mac though.</font>

I thought it was version 2.5 I started with, although perhaps there was a 2.0 release. I remember it was advertised in one of the design mags, probably How, and there was a special deal to get it cheap. I didn't have enough money to buy Fontographer at the time, so I opted for this new FontLab thing. We've grown up together.

Adam, as far as I can tell in the new metrics window the numeric data still resides above the glyph showings. Will the user have the ability to flip flop these two windows so the numeric data can sit below the glyph showings?

Stuart :D

Adam, thanks again your additional info.
This information is very helpful.
Especially, metrics and kerning method seems good.

Eric , thanks your advice.

>A new machine was a small fortune but FL was crashing around
>10 times a day so I finnaly switched. Also, some features like
>Anchors will not work with the OS9 version.
>The metrics window seems to be smoother under X too.

I see.
I was using the demo version. Since I had not mastered yet, I have not noticed the problem.
It seems to be better to use FL under OSX rather than OS9.
Anyway, my having to do is saving money for new machine.

Kunihiko

FontLab Dates

1990 - First experiments with fonts and font editing
1991 - Release of the Font Designer for DOS
1992 - FontLab 2 (first rewrite)
1993 - FontLab 2.5 (ScanFont 2)
1994 - FontLab 2.51
1996 - Composer 1.0 (based on new FL3 core)
1997 - ScanFont 3, TypeTool 2 (both partially based on FL3 core)
1998 - FontLab 3 (second rewrite)
1999 - First Mac products
2000 - FontLab 3.1
2001 - FontLab 4
2002 - FontLab 4.5
2003 - FontLab 4.6
2004 - FontLab Studio 5

Hot dog! I hope FL will spend their time getting the Mac version
out as soon as possible rather than working to make it OS 9 compatible.