Moving future Fontlab releases to Adobe AIR seems like a great idea to me. Fontlab has a tiny user base and supporting multiple platforms is a waste of scarce resources.

Oh no. I suggest that the Fontlab guys concentrate on the Windows platform, and the Dutch concentrate on OS X. We just need that glyph editor Georg... By the way, who uses DLT FontTools (other than DLT)?

Moving any software releases to Adobe AIR seems like a terrible idea to me.

I can’t read that site but did fine this one particular quote funny (and somewhat true):

«And AIR apps are like modern day Java applets... sure, they run on every platform. But they also suck on every platform.»
http://www.macworld.com/article/140209/2009/04/tweetie_brichter_intervie...

Yeah, but for Fontlab just sucking on every platform would be a huge improvement.

I’m looking forward to it! But I doubt the supposed switch will happen in v6. Besides, Yuri already revealed the plans for the next version of Fontlab. He laid them out at Robothon http://blip.tv/file/1911058

Maybe this will be an additional push to help Georg and/or Erik/Tal/Just/et al to get out a nice Mac drawing app.

Fingers crossed for an alternative!

Cheers,
r.k

PS- Claus- URW++ is DTL’s (other) customer I believe.

Sorry, I can’t read Russian... But if it’s true, I am not looking forward to it. :-(

@Ricardo: Google Translate says, “Flash: Our new super-mega пупер programs at the UI will slelan FLECHE (omit the technical details).”

“Flash: Our new super-mega пупер programs at the UI will slelan FLECHE (omit the technical details).”

Well, that clears things up.

So, is this real or what?

I’m wondering if they might use Flash just for the UI aspect of FontLab Studio. Adobe’s been known to do some of that itself.

T

Hard to tell, my Russian is a bit rusty:

новых супер-пупер мега программах

transliterates as:

of the new super-pooper mega programs

What do you think?

Во всех наши новых супер-пупер мега программах UI будет слелан на флеше

But after mega programs it says UI, so I think Thomas is right.

Incidentally, I’m always amused when Russian-Speaking people try to transliterate flash back into English. It often ends up as “flesh,” as in “Experienced flesh designer wanted.”

Apparently the following sentence reads: “If someone from the interested persons believed that this is fundamentally wrong is the most time speak!”

Actually a lot of you already use flash apps in your Adobe products. Certain pallets in Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator are actually tiny flash applications interacting with your software.

A perfect example of this is the kuler pallet in Illustrator. Go to Window > Adobe Labs > Kuler. You can see how well integrated it is to the application with the added benefit of communicating to the kuler site.

I don’t know how Fontlab6 will use Flash but don’t write off their interest in Flash right away.

It can be an easy way to do cross-platform stuff that involves extensive interaction, so heavily UI-oriented elements are often a first choice for moving *part* of a program to Flash.

Or so I learned back in my Adobe days. Not that I’m a real programmer myself. :)

Cheers,

T

Thank you Pentapus, Thomas, and Steve, for your comments.