Improved Unicode Support in FontLab Studio 5
Adam Twardoch - FontLab Ltd
Intended Audience: Type Designers, Font Developers, Software Engineers,Linguists, Publishers, Managers, Educators
Session Level: Intermediate, Advanced
This session will focus on new and improved features of the professional font editor FontLab Studio 5 with regard to Unicode compatiblity.
Fontlab Ltd. offers a complete environment for type designers and font developers. With FontLab Studio 5 and AsiaFont Studio 5, software developers and type designers are able to create professional-quality Unicode-savvy OpenType fonts: either from new artwork or by converting their existing font libraries from legacy formats.
The new generation of FontLab's professional font editors (FontLab Studio 5 and AsiaFont Studio 5) includes numerous improvements relevant for Unicode font developers. The session will present some of the feature highlights: better support for Unicode 4.0 SMP characters, support for advanced layout technologies (improved OpenType Layout support and new AAT support), better right-to-left rendering, improved internationalized font names, custom character mapping tables, greatly improved class-based kerning and metrics, better handling of embedded bitmaps. We will discuss the key improvements in FontLab Studio 5 that are helpful in the process of designing and developing fonts for Unicode environments.
If you are interested in attending this session, some understanding of font technology issues, the glyph-vs-character model and the advanced typographic layout technologies (OpenType Layout, AAT) is recommended but not required.