Hi Everybody,

Check out the new HTML5 version of Fontstructor experimental version. It's been quietly introduced, without much fanfare. It looks and works just like the Flash version. Yet it is the most fundamental change of FS since the very beginning of FS. 

This forum seems to be the proper place to discuss all issues regarding the new HTML5 Fontstruct. I encourage all members to test the new version, and report the relevant issues here. 

I say a big thank you to Rob Meek for his great undertaking.

I 'saw' it yesterday and used it for working on my latest font. While I like the idea of HTML5 I find that flash places the bricks immediately (like manual drawing) showing each as it is placed, and drawing lines/boxes, erasing and moving glyphs is shown in realtime.

On my computer I notice lag in HTML5 which gets more pronounced as the drawing speed increases; in the case of large freehand drawing the bricks show only when the tool is released through mouse click.

In this new version I find the double arrow for highlighting irritating. The lag for this tool and the eraser is more pronounced than for line drawing or placing single bricks. When erasing I can't see a highlighted area before it disappears unless I draw the box very slowly.

I think the lag in displaying is due to HTML5, I am sure I will get used to it when I use it more often. But for the moment I will stick to the flash version, specially when correcting or adding to previous fonts. I will use the HTML5 version for new fonts with the basic set of glyphs, to get used to it.

Thanks for the feedback! Please note that the HTML5 has only been rolled out for a few users - for testing and bug fixing. It has not been quietly introduced – it is not released yet. Most people do not see the buttons to access the new FontStructor. 

My last font, zyklopedia, was made between FS and FS HTML5. I have not see differences on both working on it.

BTW, Btw, the Tools icons in FS HTML5 seems me a little... hmmm... pale/soft/evanescent?

@elmo point taken.
@Aeolien I'll look into the lag. 
Remember there is a google group for the test group to discuss issues with the new FontStructor. Let me know if you didn't get an invite.

Thanks Meek, I have sent a message :)

@meek: Well, the FS invitation to the FontStruct Development group is expired for me... Can you send me a new one, please? Thank you.

@elmo Should be in its way!

About commenting: I want to remove/hide a comment made under my font, from the live feed and incidentally also from my font's comments list. I can't find a 'delete' nor a 'hide' function.

I don't want to provide a public platform to people "advertising" by providing access to their profile through following the commentator's name. Maybe a simple 'hide' would be useful to the FSor, with staff deciding to delete all trace of the comments or just keep them hidden in the live feed, when they are signalled. 

If this is in the wrong forum I apologise; I can't find a list of the various site linked and user founded pages.

Such functions used to exist before the website design was updated.

I want a feature that will help to place the bricks between cells, and something for resizing them (bricks)

more bricks and custom bricks...

Is there any way of making a glyph that prints when a word processing program instigates a line return ... or ... when the return button is pressed ?  Thankyou in anticipation of your response.

FULL UNICODE SUPPORT

Make it remember if you're on Expert Mode.

ALL 1,114,112 CODE POINTS, PLEASE

Not a suggestion but rather an observation: these past weeks I noticed live feed errors: I can't see new/updated font images. Why does it happen, can I change something?

The samplers show up ... just the font presentation doesn't.

The image display problem is also on the general and personal galleries and less frequent on the 'splash screen'.

I'm with Aeolien. Whats happens?

This also happens to me. 

(I was wondering why the images don't show, but I thought it was just my internet connection)

Happens here too, also seems like the "show more" button on live feed skips a page.

Where the name letters?

@ecluniverso: those chracters are part of Latin-A.

I would suggest adding one character from Latin Extended-E: small chi, i.e., U+AB53. The capital is part of Latin Extended-D.

@TCWhite: I would suggest adding the whole block, though.

@meek - I've noticed that when you are in a FontStruction, pressing the yellow Help button (Next to grey Expert Mode button) results in a "404 Not Error"...

@meek - Also, the nudge feature improvement is great.  Is there any way to make 4 nudge keyboard shortcuts ( U/D/L/R - hopefully near each other) for the next FS iteration/upgrade?

Shortcuts are ok but 'near to each other' depends on the keyboard. In our buildings are French, German and English depending on who/which computer/room is FontStructing.

@Aeolien - You are correct.  However, of the 4 obvious ones (the 4 arrow keys), the <- and -> are already in use to cycle through the glyphs.  I was only think 'near one another' in a directional/layout sense; it wouldn't make sense to have them strewn across the keyboard, or where the UP nudge key below the DOWN nudge key, or the RIGHT nudge on the far left side...  :^)

In that case some shortcuts would be ok :) although I don't nudge enough to find it beneficial.

@Aeolien - While I usually don't nudge, either, I _am_ thinking of making another "wonky"-type font...

@Goatmeal thanks for the tip about the help page, I'll look into that.
There are keyboard shortcuts for the nudge feature – just shift and then press the relevant arrow key (only works in expert mode). Looking forward to your wonkiness!

@Meek - Thank you, Rob.  Would it be possible to add that information (Shift + Arrow key = Nudge) under the Expert Mode section of the Keyboard Shortcuts page, as well as add any other new keyboard shortcuts for the most recent update/upgrade of FontStruct?

@ecluniverso: "Thanks for reporting something I already know", is an assumption, which is a really bad habit; I was unaware of what you were referencing, until I looked it up. :) However, you can create your fonts here, then open them in FontForge, which is free to download. You can then select the entire font, then change its encoding. FontForge has an encoding button in its menu.

@architaraz: Sure. However, most of that block is specific for Teuthonista, and only one other character aside from chi is used outside of transcription purposes, and that is the curled u. But, I agree, if you're going to add a couple of characters, you might as well add the whole block. :)

ALL of unicode 0000-10FFFF

Is it possible to speed up loading the Fontstructor? So far I have waited 8 minutes for it to go past 20%, thrice ... My new font's height fills the grid and has more than the first 2 Latin sets.

impossible date. last edited 11/01BC?

An anti-spoofing system that detects similar letters.

@Aeolien. Let me know the name of the FontStruction and I can have a look. 8 minutes is a very long time.

@ Meek: Thank You. I have sent the details in a PM.

Another puzzlement for Meek rather than a suggestion. Since extending a Romaeo version to LatinA I get a scripting error when opening the preview.

The preview loads up to MoreLatin, gets stuck for 30 seconds or so, then the error is declared. The remaining glyphs jump into the preview after a few seconds when I have clicked on "continue".

> A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, open the script in the debugger, or let the script continue.

Script: http://static.fontstruct.com/j…b1508efe9a5f4e4ada06001011985e:3822

How about to release FontStruct on Android and iOS? The ability to make fonts abroad without a laptop, in a offline. What are your ideas for mobile FontStruct?

@Aeolien It’s because its a very, complex FontStruction with a lot of letters. If you split it into multiple FontStructions you should no longer see the error. You can message me about this if you need more help.

@MadSheep3 Thanks for suggesting that. It’s a recurrent thought and request. With the HTML5 FontStructor at least you can now work on touch devices, and it’s also a good step towards appland. The offline thing is a bit tricky but I'm sure we will work on that at some point. 

@ Meek: thank you. I hope that I can access those of my complex fonts that need updating and/or 'splitting'.

Maybe we could chose between the old and the new Fontstructors, on the log-in page?

@Aeolien I'd rather build a split function. For now, just let me know in a message if there are FontStructions which you need and want to split (and how you want them splitted) and I can do that for you.

As you can see, there are floating blocks in the download window. I don't know where's the problem. (Disregard that it's a conscript and there are some letters missing)

@opipik I will have a look. It may take a few days.

The biggest features I would like to see from working around with FontStruct is:

-A way to subtract shapes from other shapes. I know this was suggested before, but it's something that is really needed

-Either a way to subdivide bricks into bigger shapes, sort of like reverse-composite bricks, OR a way to make composites of composites. Currently, there are only so many ways to use round bricks. The limit of a one-by-one brick just does not do enough.

-FontStruct for Windows!

I can't read the news (all I get is "Make your comment:" on an otherwise blank page and served with an HTTP error 500) and the new bricks don't show up for me.

@Umbreon126 maybe clear your browser cache. I did see the 500 error yesterday but it seems to have gone now(?)

@Meek - Rob, to follow up yesterday's FS Message: I'm still getting the "Make Your Comment:" message on FireFox 53.0.3, while my IE 11 gives me the 500 error.  I also received the "MYC:" message on Chrome at work on Friday...

I get the "Make your comment" message on the latest Firefox and Chrome. One can't comment though as there's no way of getting the page to accept text °.°

@Meek - Rob, June 2 news link about "Connecting Brick Pack" works again on IE 11 and Chrome 58...

It now works for me too.

Is there a general problem with the page about the Reverse comp? Or am I the only member seeing "Make your comment:" on a blank page without anywhere to comment ? :/

I'm having that page as well.

@Aeo, @Juta I am having that problem as well.

thanks for the tip. basically ok now.

This isn't a 'suggestion", just a question. Is there a help page about inserting html codes in comments? I wanted the words "see here" clickable to send someone to a help page but my html text disappears every time.

I made 4 attempts at this font for the ReverseComp, every time I meet a save problem. This last result is hilarious, right? But oh so infuriating. Do I start from scratch this close to "the day"? Do I give up ? 

I noticed one of the new bricks isn't aligned properly:

@Yautja. Thanks! I'm aware. It will be fixed!

Something I mentioned in the Reversecomp feed (where it didn't really belong ) needs clarifying for me ... regarding competitions.

I wonder about minimum glyph/glyph type requirements to make a font qualify as a valid competition entry.

Over the years I've noticed fonts that give those 'basic letters' found in the "English Alphabet" but I've rarely seen additional letters from the MoreLatin or another language set; some fonts also give numerals; some give UC plus LC, others only give one of these; there are competition  fonts which offer (at times starkly) basic punctuation  while others in the same competition might give much of the  BasicLatin punctuation set; some fonts might offer the creator's own language or desired diacritics; some fonts have symbols like &,+,*,€,©,².

I think that each font creator has a target public in mind for the style he creates within the frame of the competition theme  (this would be useful to indicate in the font's description). A decorative font can but not necessarily must have numerals/punctuation/symbols making it suitable for a headline but not for body text; an ornate font might not even suit for longish headline words, a punctuation mark or number. Other glyphs in a (competition) font are proposed as seen useful for the font after trialling by the creator. Fonts for a specific purpose, obvious from the  style of the design, can often be extended but do competition fonts generally need to have all those glyphs on or before the end of the final day?

Thankfully I have not been told "numerals" under my latest comp fonts, but some members' fonts are commented on as being incomplete despite having an obvious non-body text character.

Is there a possibility to channel this, narrow the vast choice of possible glyphs to a 'basic requirement' value for any given competition - up to  stating if a font only needs to show x number of sample letters/symbols/illustrations/punctuation/glyphs chosen freely  by each competition participant.

Would it be a good idea to limit all competition entry fonts to make the field even and  judging (font style, theme-related expression)  easier? How about the 26 "English language" letters, (maybe numbers 1, 2, 3, 7) plus the straight quotation marks, apostrophy,  "?", "!", "-", ";"  "." and "," to match the style of the font even where these aren't necessarily useful. These would give a font that can be used for headlines/a message/splash info if the theme allows for designs to suit this type of use.

Sorry about the length of this post, I think I found the right words although in a longwinded presentation,  to explain what I meant in my post on the Reversecomp feed.

Thanks @Aeolien.

I don't see a need to set a minimum number of glyphs for competitions. – There are valid fonts and valid competition entries which are not alphabetic at all, and which can perform well with less than 26 glyphs.

If you are making an alphabetic font then a complete character set will make the font more usable and so is likely to gain approval for that.

Generally I would encourage all FontStructors to work on extending their character sets – it’s one of the big markers of quality and usefulness – but often people just want to experiment or sketch out an idea, and that’s ok too. 

Can we have more advanced tools (e.g. Free brick nudging, Individual brick resizing, Custom unicode codepoints and alternates and ligatures, free brick drawing, etc.)

You should add a way to make letters automatically join (e.g. like in Arabic)

First, a couple of bug reports, from most to least important:

1. Attempting to search any FontStructor's user page returns a "500 Internal Server Error" page.

2. IIRC there was originally (or was supposed to be, anyway) a predictive search feature which popped up as you typed into the search bar. For me, this is barely working: I can only get usernames to pop up, and only after I type in the entire name. (running Firefox 55 on Windows 7)

3. I had previously thought that if you view comments from <today's date> several years ago, it shows up as e.g. "Today, 6:32 PM". However, looking further up this particular thread confuses me:

(the comment before the thread of "today"s is from 12th July 2016, and the one after from 3rd September 2016, while today's actual date is 13th September 2017. Unsure what the actual dates of the shown comments are.)

Now for a couple of suggestions:

4. When I click on a tag on any of my (private) pages of fonts, I'd like it show all of my fonts (public or private) that have that tag. It's already possible to do this by going to your private homepage and appending ?tag=X, where X is the tag you want to find, but it'd be nice to have a quicker way to do this.

5. I swear I had another suggestion... Oh well, I just found another bug: it appears that this particular "font" was last edited on "30th November -0001"?

403 error on compose message...

So the messages shown above were posted on 13th July 2016... Maybe it's only the day of the month that's taken into account?

After kerning Tâ,Tü,fé,Tè etc I need to kern diacritics my keyboard can't produce. Using the charactermap I found ctrl+00E5 and alt+0229 to paste but the fontstructor preview won't accept codes nor 'paste'. How does one kern those glyphs?

Is this what you meant by copy-and-paste? It works for me if I use the keyboard shortcut for pasting (ctrl+v).

@Aeolien You have to go to a unicode table then copy and pate them into the Preview box then move the cursor to whereever you want in the preview.

@Everyone What do you think about Brick Adding, Subtracting, and Multiplying?

@ umbreon @xBox: yes, copy a glyph from the fontstructor (a+ring glyph access using the moreLatin characterband) then paste into the fontstructor preview text. It doesn't work for me  :/

@aeolien Did you press Ctrl+V?

Yes xBox. It displays the 'v' .

Try dragging the text into the preview...

xBox, I even tried smiling at it and composed beautiful prose ;) The Fontstructor preview won't accept glyphs that I can't type into it with my keyboard. Changing keyboards is crazy complicated, confusing, time consuming.

What did you think of brick addition, subtraction and multiplication, Aeolien and everybody?

• Brick addition already exists.  It's called Brick Stacking, and has been around for years.  It was initially a bug in the FS program that exploited by one of the FS Grandmasters, “williaum” (AKA will.i.ૐ), and made known to the rest of us.  Rob later made it an official feature of FS in a subsequent update.

• The request for Brick subtraction has been around almost as long as Brick Stacking, and since at least mid-2013 in these Suggestion threads.  I had also suggested an "Invert"/ Opposite Brick function back then as well...

• However, your example of Brick "multiplication" is actually an example of the Exclusive Or (XOR) logical function, not multiplication.

Yes, stacking bricks is adding them together. By substracting you mean stacking but leaving non-overlaid areas as the new brick? Would we really get different bricks this way? Invert brick function sounds stimulating though

@Aeo yeah...

Following users?

complete utf-32 support (all of planes 0-65535)

Ligatures

Alternates

Nice, PiotrGrochowski I wanted the .notdef glyph to be pixel-optimized as well...

I actually agree with those propositions, especially the tenth one as I'm kinda getting bored of always enabling the expert mode and to put it to unicode each time I create a font.

I'd also have a proposition for the gallery:

In the sort section, you should add the "Random" option, so (yet depending of the categories or the licences) we could browse into fonts without having to get the first/last-sorted ones first. It'd give chances to less known fonts that went exactly in the middle of most of the current sort options.

Basically, having an option that would sort the fonts randomly.

I'm not sure to get this one as those fonts actually look fine when I see them.

However, I already had seen fonts that could have that problem.

Oh, before I forgot I was thinking about a glitch that happened to me recently. Sometimes, if you create a character after "setting" the height of the font (I'm not exactly sure that's the reasons but that happened that way to me), the newly created character would be set unproperly on the Y-axis when seen on the preview. The glitch seems to disappear if you save, quit, and return in the fontstructor.

the ability to change the .notdef glyph

I noticed two things and wondered if they can be improved? *I'm sure the st ligature was next to the ff, fl, fi. Is it possible to have it back there? *Middle Welsh LL (UC&LC) are almost illegible in the glyph band. Could their images be enlarged?

I would like to be able to set the height and depth of a font so that if I have a descender that goes below the depth it does not make the font taller, but simply overlaps onto the line below.

   I would double it. Of course, there are the filter settings (grid scales). But it isn’t clear how they influence metrics of a font. It is required to download the font to guess right grid scale multipliers. The control over the metrics would be very helpful.

I really hope for fixing the font description. Now the paste (insertion) does not work, including links to references.

Of the new features, I could use the possibility of adding alternative characters, for example, in the preview field, pressing the key will immediately change the letter in the entire text. This could also be implemented as a transparent mask or an archive symbol that would be visible and would not change when the letter was changed. I'm not sure that these functions of other font programs will be in demand here. Sorry for my bad english

When you make composites, the Fontstructor seems to stack some of the bricks multiple times, making the composite look thicker than other bricks. This makes the characters look very uneven in the Fontstructor and the preview window, hopefully it can be fixed?

I had a parasite glyph to delete but couldn't find; with another set of eyes we succeeded after 20minutes searching. My idea: would it be possible to change the colour in the language(etc) lists of the sets we made a glyph for?

Isnt it the u+FFFF codepoint??

xBox, it wasn't there  :/ somehow it was in an arabic glyph point. Had that "Arabic" in the list of sets been 'lit up' or of a different colour to indicate completed glyph space(s), we'd have seen it immediately and saved so much time.

It's my day of "Oh-nos"? I spotted that my FontStructor has altered a glyph image in the dingbats set to show my copyright sig. How is that possible?  I'd like to have the closed scissors back .......................

Here it is without my current copyright glyph, it still shows that original "glyph" I used in the fonts I prepared for sale. Strange?! I haven't made this "glyph" for 'Jardin' (I'll add 'Aeolien' from November, Expo-Fair is over).

Did you use fontchanger for that screenshot??

If so, try turning it off... If that doesn't work, try hiding it, if that doesnt work, try moving the ffont file to the recycle bin and then download a new file.

What and where is that, xBox??  I'm not aware having 'done' anything other than write text into the glyph space dedicated to the black scissors :|

font changer: Allows you to change fonts on the page locally.

where? on toolbar or under extensions.

Add the Private Use Area.

65536 Glyph editing. Plane 0...

While making a font I often came across the need for this kind of block. Yet it isn't there and therfore makes some ideas impossible.

@Apolysus it's possible to make those using composites. You'll need to have expert mode turned on. (Though it would be nice to have those bricks available by default!)

@meek - Would it be possible to have a "snap to grid" option for the Letter Width line?  Like how the vertical and horizontal Guides currently behave?  As of late, it seem like I'm always placing the Letter Width line on either side of a grey line, and not exactly where I wanted it to land...

     I completely understand the point of giving FontStructors more freedom to space their characters' widths by not restricting them to the default grey grid.  However, the result seems to be that the placement of the Letter Width line is now 'looser' than I remember; having a "snap to grid" option would be helpful.  Thanks for listening.  :^)

Regarding letter width, I see a grey shadow the colour of the gridsquare edges, just off the actual green line. That line makes me think that I need to move a bit more to left or right, resulting in irregular letter spaces that can be hard to find. Sometimes the green line is exactly on the gridsquare's edge and is invisible, I can only find it by looking for the mouse pointer arrows when swiping across where I know/think the green line should be.

@Aeolien - For fixed-width fonts, I simply scroll through the glyphs using the left- & right-arrow keys, carefully watching the Letter Width line; if it stays stationary while I zip through the set, everything's fine...  More often than not, however, at least a few of the lines will "jump" during the scroll -- telling me I need to go back and fiddle with the width again!  ;^)

Can we have guides for the descenders, x-height, etc...

@Se7enty-Se7en - FontStruct already allows you to have numerous guides for descenders, x-heights, etc.: when you place your cursor on each vertical and horizontal guide, a [+][–] appears.  The vertical [+][–] is on the upper half of the guide line, while the horizontal [+][–] is on the left half.  Select [+] to create a new guide; select [–] to remove an existing guide.  Some of the floating menus on the grid might be in the way and abscure the [+][–], so either turn off the menus or move them out of the way to the bottom and/or right of the grid.

The one thing I miss most here at fontstruct isn't about designing, but rather the ability for more clever archiving of my fontsructions.

Most of my work is consisting of multi-styled fontstructions or is part of a larger sub catagory, such as for example my various recaps. Not to mention the rapid expansion of my collection of works. So I would love to have slight more options to sort and arrange.

But I suspect besides me and a hand full of others only few users will really bennefit from this due to that the majority of fonts only come in one style.

So the chance for this to get materialized is slim.

Also this most likely will have a negative effect on creative input as it is encouraging excessive cloning of already exsisting material. Wouldn't it?

But so far Fontstruct has delivered on most of my needs,

keep up the good work guys!

Cheers

Another very time saving feature would be to have the option to pick up all, or a group of guides (maybe devide the feature in 2 options, horizontal/vertical) at once and move them to another location.

For example one or two units to the left or right (best would be just anywhere one desires).

Now when I decide to make a outlined version or a 3D version of a earlier structed solid glyph I have to rebuild basically the entire guideline grid I previously set up all over. In many cases this is not a real deal, but this becomes a total different story when a glyph occupies a very large grid surface. And the amount of time it consumes here to setup things proportionally is quite a lot.

Another good example for this to become a real time saver is when my design needs overlapping outlines and kerning is already being used for more dynamic and complex metrics between individual letters, Now it gets a lot more practical to incorporate the overlapping outlines directly into the design itself by way of glyph position on the grid. Being able here to drag around the etire guide grid would be of such great help!!!

I added the image to give a better idea of how my guide grids often look.

Cheers

I'm not sure if this has been suggested yet, but maybe an option to make bold/italic/bold-italic versions of fonts and include them with the download?

Kind like this:

*font name* Regular

*font name* Italic

*font name* Bold

*font name* Bold-Italic

@meek - Yes, a searchable option to find FontStructors would be a great addition -- a secret wish of mine.  (You've helped me once or twice find a FontStructor, so I could then find the name of their FontStruction that I had forgotten!)

@meek - Also, it may have been brought up before, but is there any way to get the "edit comment" button back for our own FontStructions?  I understand why comments one makes in others' FontStructions might be locked, but I miss having that option for your own posts/pictures in your own FontStruction pages...

In short, I make a lot of typos and don't proofread properly before hitting the submit button...  :^b

@goatmeal Yes. Ideally we would have the ”edit for 15 minutes” kind of option which a lot of sites offer. 

I don't know what you guys are talking about - I've been able to edit comments on my own Fontstructions since I joined in February. Did it go missing for older users somehow?

Having said that, it would be amazing to be able to update pictures and samples, so that we only have to maintain one simple rather than clogging the page up with update posts...

@zephram - Everyone can edit the descriptions of their own fonts.  I'm talking about the comments section below that, where you can add pictures and further comments, other people can comment on your work, etc.

In the past, you could make a comment on your page or add a picture, then edit it, if needed -- but ONLY under YOUR OWN FontStructions; you could not edit comments that you made on other people's fonts.  We lost that ability after an update some time ago...

It's exactly what your asking for in your second comment: for example, I realized that I made a typo in a sample picture.  In the past, you could edit your post, delete the old picture, then upload a new picture in the same comment.  Now, like you said, we now have to add a comment to upload new picture, while the old picture is still there...

Speaking of pictures, is there a reason the pictures in comments are stretched to fill the whole width now? It just makes most pictures look blurry and low quality, which is not good for samples.

@V. Sarela (Yautja) - I could be wrong, but in the olden days of FontStruct, the max width of pictures was 380 pixels; any larger samples would be scaled down to that size -- not sure if it stayed the same size and only displayed as smaller, or the picture was actually downsized.

After a more recent FontStruct update, the max width is now 700 pixels, and it appears that older pictures that were less than that are now being stretched to the new size.  I'm sure @meek could better explain it (especially pointing out where I'm wrong in my layman's analysis).  ;^)

Fixed now. 
This thread is now closed.
For future suggestions, please use the next thread.