Glyph Designer 1.4 – Released
We have just released version 1.4 of Glyph Designer. This release contains a number of new features as well as fixes to some bugs that were reported. The details of the release are:
New in 1.4
- Identifies fonts that support kerning in the font list using the ‘K’ icon
- Possible to turn off kerning in preview view. State saved in project
- Possible to turn off kerning during export. State saved in project
- Possible to switch Anti-Aliasing on and off which can be useful when working with pixel style bitmap fonts. Saved in project
- Supports outline styles Inner, Centred and Outer
- Improved the rendering for inner shadows and changed shadow options to just outer and inner
- Possible to change the roughness of the paths used when filling and outlining glyphs
- Possible to change the line join type between segments in a glyph to Mitre, Round, Bevel
- Possible to edit the mitre depth to help reduce overdraws with thick outlines with a line join type of Mitre
Fixed in 1.4
- Fixed bug where some letters were being clipped at the top due to incorrect y coordinates in control file
- Fixed bug which was causing fill gradient colours that were transparent to always show through white when a shadow was also being used
- Fixed bug that caused the lineHeight value in the .fnt file to be calculated incorrectly
- Fixed bug that caused sparrow output to sometimes have incorrect xAdvance values
The bigger additions to this release are the improved tools for outlines on the glyphs. There have been a number of requests to expand on the possible options in this area so we have introduced the ability to provide Photoshop style inner, centred and outer strokes along with options to change the roughness of the glyphs paths, the line segment join styles and the mitre depth. These new options provide a good number of different effects that can be generated on your fonts now.
With the changes to the outline feature we have also started to introduce intelligent metric updates. This means that as the size of each glyph grows based on the output width, the metrics for the glyphs are updated so that the spacing between the glyphs remains the same. This is the start of features that we will also make available through the GUI so that the metrics for fonts can be altered manually.
The render engine has been given another good shake down in this release which means we have also been able to improve the quality of the inner shadow feature. This improves the speed in the GUI as well as the quality of the glyphs. The changes in this area have also meant that we have been able to fix a long standing problem which caused transparent fill colors to not work correctly when there was also an outer shadow.
We hope you like this release and please continue to let us know of you find any problems or have any suggestions for new features.
Regards
Mike & Tom
6 Comments
CC on May 2nd, 2011
Love the new outline styles. This just got a lot more versatile.
The last time I tried to use a bitmap font with Cocos2D, I discovered that only the TTF version of their label class supported text wrapping. A quick glance over the documentation seems to indicate that you still can’t set the dimensions on a bitmap font. Do you know of a way to (easily) use fonts made with Glyph Designer in Cocos2D that wrap?
If you do, that might be a good thing to link to off of the GD site. Also, I notice that your sample bitmap font project still links off to Hiero – might want to change that to recommend GD.
Thanks for the excellent tools!
mike on May 2nd, 2011
@CC, pleased your liking the additions in this release. I’ve done some work in my own engine before that handles wrapping and Tom has also done the same. I’ll see what I can dig out and share what we have.
Mike
Brett on May 17th, 2011
Just wanted to say a belated thanks for 1.4. The new outline features are really neat and makes your fonts look that much better. Great Job!
aaron on May 20th, 2011
“Supports outline styles Inner, Centred and Outer”
Thank you! awesome.
Dan on May 2nd, 2011
Hey mike, just wondering, Is this app going to be posted rather than download? I just bought a copy.
Also, when I hit the download button and unzip the file, trying to execute the app gives me “this app is not supported on this type of mac”. I have a mac mini on OS 10.6.7. Will this affect the copy I just bought?