This can't be true. Please. Pretty please.
Martin Kotulla
worst piece of software ever to hit the PC. This piece of j*k sucks big
time.
I'm not even talking about the fact that this is not a Windows program
but some cross-platform software that looks like a bad imitation of the
Mac user interface. I'm not talking about the fact that dropdown
controls don't work like they are supposed to under Windows or that
static text in dialog boxes has a white background in otherwise gray
dialog boxes.
I am not even talking about buying an upgrade from 3.5 to 4.1 where
Macromedia's German distributor Up-to-date is not able to ship the
program for *weeks*, always claiming not to have received an order. I am
not talking about, after finally extracting an upgrade package from
FontShop, that the program requests a serial number -- there is no
serial number to be found, and none of the old 3.2, 3.3, 3.5 or 4.0 (Mac
and Windows) work. FontShop gave us a serial number by phone claiming,
"yeah, we get these calls every so often. Why don't you use the
following serial ....?"
I am not even talking about the fact that Macromedia has a semi-secret
4.1.5 but continues shipping 4.1, and that it's pretty impossible in
Germany to get your hands on a copy of 4.1.5.
I'm talking about things that make it impossible to work with the
program:
* It continuously eats up about 90% of the CPU usage under Windows NT.
On my shiny new 400 MHz PII box, everything slows down to a crawl when
Fonto is running.
* It is not reasonably scriptable with any kind of macro recorder or
programming language. We had to batch-convert about 3000 fonts from 3.5
to 4.1, and our last rescue was to use a Visual Basic program sending
keystrokes to Fontographer, always pausing for a second after each
keystroke so that Fonto wouldn't skip keystrokes. I have never seen
anything like this in any Windows program.
* Because of Fonto's homegrown controls, many important controls cannot
even be controlled by sending keystrokes. What's so bad about using
standard Windows dropdown controls under Windows?
* If you open a font database by double-clicking in Explorer or dragging
from Explorer, it opens just fine. As soon as you try to save, it will
create a dbt0.tmp file, then spit out an error message that the disk is
not available. Fortunately, you can rename the temp file back to the
font database's name to rescue the file.
* When doing a Save as..., Fontographer shortens the file name to 32
characters. Hello? This is Windows, not a Macintosh.
* It imports Fontographer 3.5 databases incorrectly, screwing
bold-italic settings all along the way: the weight is wrong (sometimes
17661 instead of 700), the PANOSE weight information is wrong, the
italic angle is not set, the fsSelection bits are set incorrectly.
* It does not recognize -RegularItalic as a valid weight, forcing us to
rename everything from Bodoni-RegularItalic to Bodoni-Italic.
-RegularItalic worked just fine under Fonto 3.5.
* Many commands eat up memory like there's no tomorrow. Maybe someone
should tell the people who wrote Fontographer that with every malloc()
one should use free() accordingly. After a couple of "Expand stroke",
"Remove overlap", "Generate Fonts", or "Change weight" calls,
Fontographer reports that it's low on memory, and you have to restart
the program. This is really great if you are using a scripting language
because everything will run amok 'cause the script is not expecting this
situation.
* Fonto 4.1 drops hyphens and spaces in font names inconsistently for
TrueType and Type 1: "Bodoni-Serial" becomes "BodoniSerial" under
TrueType and "Bodoni-Serial" under Type 1. Fine, we thought, let's
rename everything to "Bodoni Serial" etc. This works for TrueType, but
under Type 1 it comes out as "BodoniSerial". Again, hyphens worked just
fine under Fonto 3.5.
* Here comes the bummer: Fonto 4.1 is not able to generate valid PFM
files for any font that uses AdobeStandardEncoding. This is "only" the
most often-used encoding vector for ATM for Windows. The widths of most
characters with ASCII codes > 128 is screwed up royally. And, in
contradiction to what the tech notes are saying about this bug, this is
NOT limited to composite characters.
* The great tip in the support database to create .INF and .AFM files
and let ATM finish up the work Fontographer is supposed to do, namely
create the .PFM file, does not work either: for bold italic fonts,
"ItalicAngle" is set to 0 in the .PFB, the .AFM and the .INF file.
BTW, just documenting a bug as severe as this is not sufficient. Bugs
are unavoidable, but PLEASE FIX THEM. Macromedia seems to be pulling a
"Microsoft" on Fontographer: I have read "Microsoft is investigating
this issue and will post new information as it becomes available" in
years-old MSKB articles once too often ...
And let me add that I really liked Fonto 3.5 for PC *and* Mac. It was
limited in what it could do, but at least one could tame this beast. I'm
giving up on trying to convince 4.1 to work like it's supposed to.
I have worked with Fontographer back to 3.1 on a Mac IIci, FontStudio,
FontMonger, IKARUS B, IKARUS M and IKARUS on a Sun Sparc. All of those
had their problems and idiosyncrasies, but Fontographer 4.1 is a lemon
like I've never seen one. If there were competition in the
font editor market, Fontographer would have been buried long time ago.
There. That's it. Now I feel better.
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH