Fontographer 4.1

Rating:
Summary: Fontographer's great but...
Review: I have been using Fontographer for 5 years or more. In our part of the world (the South Pacific) there are numerous languages which have multiple vowels (e.g. Maori has 10 and Samoan has 20). These occur to lengthen a vowel by adding a macron above, to create a micro-pause (glottal) by adding a close single quote before and combinations of these. Creating special typefaces with these characters and making special linguisitic characters for dictionaries and academic books have been our major uses.

Fontographer has been wonderful. It has allowed us to do things we couldn't any other way. I have constantly been surprised at the power of the program and wished I could have more time to play with it.

BUT. As proprietor of a design and typesetting business I am used to purchasing and using a wide variety of graphic & layout software and fonts. Fontographer is showing its age in comparison. It no longer conforms to accepted standards for interfaces. It is unstable in the modern environment (I have to turn off every extension but the most basic to run it). And it hasn't been upgraded since Adam was a boy. I fear that it will become completely incompatible with a modern operating system soon and then I will have to abandon it. Macromedia are you listening?

Rating:
Summary: Fontographer's great but...
Review: I have been using Fontographer for 5 years or more. In our part of the world (the South Pacific) there are numerous languages which have multiple vowels (e.g. Maori has 10 and Samoan has 20). These occur to lengthen a vowel by adding a macron above, to create a micro-pause (glottal) by adding a close single quote before and combinations of these. Creating special typefaces with these characters and making special linguisitic characters for dictionaries and academic books have been our major uses.

Fontographer has been wonderful. It has allowed us to do things we couldn't any other way. I have constantly been surprised at the power of the program and wished I could have more time to play with it.

BUT. As proprietor of a design and typesetting business I am used to purchasing and using a wide variety of graphic & layout software and fonts. Fontographer is showing its age in comparison. It no longer conforms to accepted standards for interfaces. It is unstable in the modern environment (I have to turn off every extension but the most basic to run it). And it hasn't been upgraded since Adam was a boy. I fear that it will become completely incompatible with a modern operating system soon and then I will have to abandon it. Macromedia are you listening?