FOG Next wish list

[ktinkel]

Instead of re-posting the voluminous lists of wish-list items from years past, I decided to launch a brand new thread with my own urgent desires. The list can grow from there.

Most of all — I urge the FontLab people to maintain the old FOG working style. Make the FOG and FL files compatible, by all means, but don’t mess too much with the user interface. I like having corner, smooth, and tangent points and an easy keyboard way of switching among them, for example.

For the most part, I really don’t want a lot of automation, so have not mentioned things like automatic accent placement. (I don't believe it can be well done and am always annoyed by fonts — especially commercial fonts — that have been built that way.)

Anyway, my relatively short list:

• Compatibility with Mac OS X, before Classic disappears. (In fact, is it still supported in Tiger?) It can be carbonized rather than native, but capable of running within OS X.

• Increase zoom levels to 6400. There is an old trick of using a 2000-unit em, but that is cumbersome and uncertain-seeming; better just allow us to zoom.

• Keyboard control of handles. We should be able to control handles the way we can points in FOG 4.

• More template layers (3, at minimum; up to 10). I am always having to drop a previous version of a character on the Guide layer just to have it for reference.

• No more resizing of characters with changes in window size. (Or at least make it a user preference.)

• Guides of different colors (and/or ability to label them).

• Keyboard and numerical control of guides.

• Improved measurement controls, based on stems, not serifs or other protuberances. Users should be able to set a reference point (a horizontal guide, say) for measuring italics or diagonal stems.