Glyphs 4 – the leading Mac font editor

Posted by microflash 5 days ago

Comments

Comment by zvr 1 day ago

I think every professional type designer I know uses this software.

I have trouble coming up with any other example of total domination of a market segment. Maybe Photoshop in its glory days, or Quark Xpress before that, but even in those cases, there were alternatives in (minor) use.

Comment by tribby 1 day ago

It’s possible you have a small sample.. I have not noticed “total domination” myself. The type foundries I know and sometimes work with are split. Many use RoboFont. FontLab is less common, but there are some shops that have invested in it deeply enough they’re still using older versions, even. And others develop their own tools, like Fontra, to better address challenges in CJK type design

RoboFont is deeply tied to the Type & Media program at KABK in the Hague. And it has a long history, building off what came before - it is both font software and pedagogy. My memory on this isn’t perfect but I believe Glyphs and RoboFont were both proposals around the time the UFO spec was being formalized

Comment by idisocjwodj 1 day ago

Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop are unquestionably dominant in their own markets.

Yes, there are alternatives. Yes, there are people using the alternatives. No, the alternatives do not hold any meaningful percentage of the design software market.

Adobe sucks but no alternative comes even close to Photoshop and Illustrator.

Comment by thomassmith65 1 day ago

That's because Adobe acquires competitors who suck less than Adobe.

Comment by jeidjwidjwk 1 day ago

The reason is immaterial, the point still stands.

Comment by thomassmith65 1 day ago

Yes, my point (ie: that Adobe sucks and has to acquire its rivals to survive) is immaterial to your primary point (ie: there are no alternatives to some Adobe products).

I suspect you know some Adobe history already - like that a couple decades back Macromedia's product suite was set to overtake Adobe's. Others here may not. It's good for them (regardless of your primary point) to know that Adobe buys its competition.

The point I made in my comment was only material to (and in agreement with) the point you made in passing: Adobe sucks!

Comment by asibahi 1 day ago

Plenty of alternatives to Glyphs. FontForge and Robofont both come to mind.

Comment by sterlind 1 day ago

please find me a single professional font designer who uses FontForge. just one.

I use FontForge because I'm a pleb hobbyist without a Mac, but it's like comparing yachts and life rafts.

Comment by msephton 1 day ago

You're a hobbyist...yet you know what individual software all other type designers use? That is impressive ;)

Comment by sterlind 20 hours ago

again, you can easily prove me wrong by finding a single professional font designer who uses FontForge as their daily driver.

Comment by msephton 18 hours ago

It’s certainly a Herculean task, not because there aren’t *type designers who use FontForge, but because there are simply too many of them for me to even consider speaking for them all. However, I’m game.

Raph Levien (Inconsolata), source: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Inconsolata/about

Comment by dcrazy 1 day ago

Microsoft Excel after 1-2-3 (the previous dominator) and before Google Sheets? Word after WordPerfect (close to dominant) and before Google Docs? PowerPoint before Keynote?

Comment by Tomte 1 day ago

Fontographer and later Fontlab were totally dominant, and they still have a huge market share.

Comment by scyzoryk_xyz 16 hours ago

The Mrs. is a font designer. I've been watching her and her Discord type design cohort master this software while putting up with all it's quirks and bugs and issues.

It's wild to me that such a tiny team builds a tool as useful as this and nobody has ruined it in anyway yet.