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Glyph Designer Changelog

What's new in Glyph Designer 2.0 Build 10

Dec 17, 2015
  • New:
  • New license scheme
  • Fixed:
  • Fixed a bug that caused glyph metric adjustments to be ignored if the fixed width option was checked in the font metrics panel

New in Glyph Designer 2.0 Build 8 (Dec 17, 2015)

  • Fixed:
  • Fixed an intermittent issue with some subscription status checks
  • All colours are now being saved in the Generic RGB colour space rather than the Device RGB colour space
  • Squished a few small UI and internal bugs
  • Polished the icon as it had some finger prints on it

New in Glyph Designer 1.9.2 Build 5666 (May 6, 2014)

  • New:
  • It is now possible to select font sizes down to 4pt. The limit used to be 8pt
  • Fixed:
  • Fixed a crash on start-up a small number of users were experiencing
  • Fixed clipping of some characters in a small number of fonts such as Helvetica Neue 36pt (Light)

New in Glyph Designer 1.9.1 Build 5639 (Apr 18, 2014)

  • Small update to allow you to zoom out to less that 1x. Handy when working with large fonts

New in Glyph Designer 1.9 Build 5590 (Apr 18, 2014)

  • NEW:
  • Share projects using Airdrop/iMessage
  • Manually select the font to use as the substitution font
  • Generate textures that are not Power of Two in size
  • Adding an outer shadow to text no longer causes the text positions to change so text will now be correctly centered even with shadows
  • Tweaks to the UI including retina icons
  • New render engine:
  • Artefacts that could be seen with some combination of effects such as outer stroke have now been elimitated
  • Improved shadows e.g. when no fill is being used all stroke types will cast shadows correctly including outer strokes
  • Both inner and outser shadows can be used togehter to extend the number of effects that can be created
  • Improved preview panel:
  • Preview text entry now accepts carriage returns rather then needing to use \n
  • Both the x and y offset values can be adjusted
  • Font metrics guide can be displayed to help guide manual changes to both the x and y offset values
  • FIXED:
  • Text spacing was not being used correctly in preview when kerning was enabled e.g. letters following kerning pairs would not be positioned correctly
  • GDCL:
  • Updated to allow for adjustments to the x and y offset values in a GD project
  • Updated to correctly adjust font metrics when outer shadows are being used
  • Updated to correctly generate non Power Of Two textures as defined in the project file

New in Glyph Designer 1.8 Build 4406 (Dec 3, 2013)

  • Updated Sprite Kit support to allow output for non-retina as well as retina, retina-iPhone, retina-ipad. Also the libSSBitmapFont library has been updated and is available for OSX as well

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.9.2 Build 4268 (Oct 31, 2013)

  • Glyph Designer now correctly sets the export location when exporting from within he application
  • Added Sprite Kit support. See http://support.71squared.com/hc/en-us/articles/200037472 for details.

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.9.1 Build 4205 (Oct 22, 2013)

  • The XML output now includes information on the XML version and encoding being used plus a comment providing information on the application that generated the output.
  • A new export type has been added (.xml (BMFont XML)) which generates XML output but with the .xml extension on the control file

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.9 Build 4135 (Oct 3, 2013)

  • Added a binary export option. Information about the binary format can be found at http://http://www.angelcode.com/products/bmfont/doc/file_format.html in the binary section. Using the binary output greatly reduces the size of the FNT control file. A common FNT file can be around 25k while using the binary output it is around 4k. We are not aware of the binary format being supported by the common frameworks so a parser would need to be developed to read in the binary data.

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.8 Build 4011 (Sep 3, 2013)

  • Fixed bug which caused the XML and LUA export output not to include the manual xAdvance changes

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.8 Build 4009 (Sep 3, 2013)

  • New:
  • It is now possible to adjust the xAdvance manually to adjust the spacing between characters. This fine adjustment can be performed ontop of the normal spacing and kerning provided by the font. The xAdvance adjustment can be found in the preview view.
  • Increased the max texture size to be 8192x8192
  • Increased the max font size to 1000
  • If you have a shadow defined in your project, the shadow configuration panel is now open by default
  • New in GDCL 1.5.5:
  • It is now possible to define an input file when using GDCL that contains the included glyphs you want to use. This file can be UTF8 so allows all characters you need to be defined. Trying to do this from the command line would cause problems when using unicode characters. The new switch to be used is -inf
  • Fixed in GDCL 1.5.5:
  • The fixed width values are now correctly scaled when using GDCL

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.7 Build 3797 (Mar 15, 2013)

  • The crash on startup for OS X 10.6+ users has now been fixed. This was due to a bug in XCode 4.6 which has been fixed in XCode 4.6.1
  • When saving your project the "Adjust Metrics" option for the stroke is now correctly saved and restored with the project

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.6 Build 3786 (Feb 20, 2013)

  • GDCL 1.4 now allows the included glyphs to be defined which will override the included glyphs within the project file

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.5 Build 3774 (Dec 27, 2012)

  • GDCL 1.3 release which fixes a problem where shadows were not generated correctly. If the Glyph Designer application is placed in a new location then GDCL will need to be re-installed from the Install menu command, otherwise the new version will be used. This can be confirmed by checking that GDCL is version 1.3 when running in verbose mode

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.4 Build 3745 (Dec 18, 2012)

  • Glyph Designer now has a built in installer for GDCL. This can be found in the main Glyph Designer menu item. This is the recommend way to install GDCL. It generates a symbolic link to the GDCL which is included in the Glyph Designer app bundle. This menas it will be automatically updated when you update Glyph Designer.
  • GDCL now incldues a new argument called -rfs (Relative Font Size). This allows you to specify a relative font size, say 0.5, rather than an actualy font size. Is you were to use 0.5 it would generate output that is 50% the size of the font in the project file you are using.
  • Some small enhancements have also been made to the render pipeline. These remove a number of artefacts that were visible in some circumstances between the stroke and fill of a glyph shape

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.3 Build 3507 (Dec 12, 2012)

  • BIG NEWS - Command line support has been introduced using a new terminal application called GDCL. More information can be found here
  • Further improvements to the anti-aliasing used in the render pipeline. This will stop some fonts from appearing to not be aligned vertically because of transparent pixels introduced by anti-aliasing
  • When exporting it’s now possible to stop the “file already exists” warning. This setting is also saved with the project and helps to streamline the export process during testing
  • A new option has been added to the export panel called “Default Font Line Height”. When ticked this causes the common line height in the control file to be the line height of the base font i.e. it does NOT take into account any change in glyph size due to shadows or outlines. If not selected then the common line height is calculated by Glyph Designer based on the actual rendered height of the glyphs with shadow and outline taken into account
  • A new option has been added to the shadow panel that allows you to select if you want the stroke being applied to cast a shadow. If it’s de-selected then only the fill of the glyph will cast a shadow

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.2 Build 3383 (Nov 29, 2012)

  • New:
  • The selected glyph border on the texture view now contrasts with the selected background color
  • Fixed:
  • Texture and preview views are now correctly being centered in the scroll view when switching between view after either the texture or preview views have changed size

New in Glyph Designer 1.7.1 Build 3347 (Nov 28, 2012)

  • A color space issue when exporting a texture was causing the texture to not get exported

New in Glyph Designer 1.7 Build 3333 (Nov 26, 2012)

  • New:
  • Glyph Designer now performs glyph substitution. What is that and why do I care I here you say :) well it’s possible to use a font that does not support all of the characters you wish to use e.g. the € may not be in the font. Previously this means that even when € was entered into the included glyphs field nothing would be rendered in the texture atlas. Glyph substitution means that if a glyph is not found in the current font, Glyph Designer will use the font family, traits, size etc to identify a font that is very similar but which does support that glyph. It will then use that font for just that glyph and add it to the texture atlas. This is a very handy feature and something that should make mixing fonts such as Chinese and Latin much easier. A glyph which has been substituted will display an S in the top left hand corner when the glyph is selected in the texture atlas view. This can be switched on or off from within the included glyph panel
  • It you want to see all the glyphs that have been substituted for the font your working on you can use the “Show Substituted Glyphs” check box in the included glyphs panel
  • Further improvements to the Line Height and yOffset calculation. Significant testing has been undertaken to make the metrics even more accurate across all fonts and font sizes. The tweaks made to the metrics may cause text to be positioned slightly differently when exported from this new version of GD so it is recommend that you test the positioning in any current apps you have when using output from this new version. Glyph Designer differs from other bitmap font tools in that the metrics it generates take into account the final rendered glyph and doesn’t simply use the original fonts metrics which can cause issues when rendering text with large strokes and shadows. This has been done to maintain the detailed font spacing and kerning that the original font has, even when effects have been applied to provide the best possible results
  • It is now possible to zoom up both the texture atlas view and preview views. This can be done using either a pinch gesture on a trackpad or using keyboard shortcuts visible within the View menu
  • It is now possible to switch between the preview and texture views using a keyboard shortcut available within the View menu
  • When moving the text in the preview view, it no longer centers the text on the mouse location, but simply moves the text in relation to the mouse which is standard behavior when grabbing and dragging an object
  • Added extra information to the glyph info panel such as origin or glyph of the texture atlas along with width and height
  • When selecting a glyph on the texture atlas, the dimensions of the glyph are now displayed. For small fonts where you can’t see this info don’t panic, just zoom up and it will be shown nice and clearly
  • The x and y coordinates of the mouse within the texture atlas or preview window are now displayed at the bottom of the Glyph Designer window
  • Fixed:
  • The bounding box for glyphs was too large causing some characters to use up to 2x more texture space that necessary. This would not have been visible when rendering text but would have used up more texture space than necessary
  • This isn’t actually a fix inside Glyph Designer, but a change we have made to the Cocos2D source and posted back to the Cocos2D V2.x branch. The fix means that the bounding box of a CCLabelBitmapFont accurately surrounds the text including it’s shadows and stroke and stops text leaking from the right hand side of those bounds. You can see the bounding box by switching on the CC_LABELBMFONT_DEBUG_DRAW parameter in ccConfig.h

New in Glyph Designer 1.6.1 Build 2262 (Oct 5, 2012)

  • Added a tick box under the Glyph Padding field. When selected this adjusts the metrics for the font taking into account the new size of the glyphs. Usefull when you are editing the glyphs outside of Glyph Designer and you want the spacing to be correct based on the larger glyph size not the original.
  • Small font sizes now produce perfect vertical alignment in the font metrics. Some fonts at very small sizes could have glyphs that were an odd pixel out. If any alignment problems are seen please report them to [email protected]
  • Changing the Glyph Padding value wasn't doing anything which has now been fixed

New in Glyph Designer 1.6.0 Build 2104 (Oct 1, 2012)

  • Some users were having problems saving project, so made some adjustments

New in Glyph Designer 1.6.0 Build 2100 (Oct 1, 2012)

  • Added the ability to use an image to fill the glyphs. You can also scale the image being used to get the fit required
  • Small GUI updated
  • Significantly improved the performance of the preview window
  • Glyph Designer no longer crashes on startup when using OS X 10.6
  • The preview window did now always show the latest font/style define until the font or style was changed with the preview visible. This is now fixed

New in Glyph Designer 1.5.9 Build 1781 (Sep 28, 2012)

  • Rendering performance improvements when editing a fonts style
  • Improved font metrics in the control file providing better character alignment
  • Fixed a bug that was causing the Chinese space character to not be output in the control file

New in Glyph Designer 1.5.8 Build 1442 (Aug 30, 2012)

  • Fixed a bug that was causing the texture to appear blank when running on Retina MacBook Pro's

New in Glyph Designer 1.5.7 Build 1315 (Jul 18, 2012)

  • Fixed certificate problem when running under Mountian Lion

New in Glyph Designer 1.5.6 Build 1310 (Jul 16, 2012)

  • Great news for people using Corona + Text Candy. Glyph Designer now supports a LUA output format that works out of the box with the Text Candy Application
  • Multi-line preview text is now supported. Just drop \n into your preview text to get a new line
  • Application signed to work with Mountain Lion GateKeeper when it's released

New in Glyph Designer 1.5.5 Build 1122 (Apr 30, 2012)

  • Increased the maximum shadow offset for better results with larger font sizes
  • Increased the maximum font size from 288 to 500 to provide better support for higher resolutions
  • Increased the maximum outline width to better support larger fonts
  • Added new solution in the preview view to support the new iPad resolution
  • Added more integrity checks on fonts to prevent crashes when using fonts with invalid kerning tables

New in Glyph Designer 1.5.4 Build 1084 (Mar 16, 2012)

  • Fixed a rare bug that caused a crash on startup when trying to load some fonts
  • Fixed an issue that caused the xOffset value to be incorrect on some fonts. Most noticable on the space character where the xOffset value could be a large negative number.

New in Glyph Designer 1.5.2 Build 953 (Nov 30, 2011)

  • Fixed a bug that was causing glyphs to jump around when applying outlines or shadows. This was visible in the preview view and would also cause the output metrics to be changed. The end result that at smaller font sizes you could have uneven spacing between glyphs that had outline and shadow effects applied. Metrics are now correctly calculated using the effects that have been applied so you may see a small change in where glyphs are positioned when rendered. This should only be by a few pixels.
  • Fixed a bug that was causing the XML output to always use the fixed width value for fonts even when not selected.

New in Glyph Designer 1.5.1 Build 905 (Nov 29, 2011)

  • Fixed a bug that was not allowing projects to be loaded by double clicking a project file while Glyph Designer was not open

New in Glyph Designer 1.5 Build 851 (Nov 28, 2011)

  • It's now possible to add padding to the glyph images for easier editing externally from Glyph Designer
  • When using an outline you can now select to adjust/not adjust the font metrics using the size of the outline
  • Any font can be used as a fixed with font with the ability to adjust the width used based on your needs. Great for HUDs
  • Lion full screen app support

New in Glyph Designer 1.4.2 Build 511 (Jul 21, 2011)

  • Fixed a problem that caused Glyph Designer to crash on startup when being used within OS X 10.7 Lion.

New in Glyph Designer 1.4.1 Build 479 (May 16, 2011)

  • Fixed an issue which caused coordinates within the .fnt file to be incorrect when exporting in XML format. This caused the top of characters to be incorrectly clipped

New in Glyph Designer 1.4 Build 450 (May 2, 2011)

  • GlyphDesigner.app is now correctly compiled as a universal 32bit/64bit application

New in Glyph Designer 1.4 Build 449 (May 2, 2011)

  • New:
  • 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:
  • 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

New in Glyph Designer 1.3 Build 131 (Mar 28, 2011)

  • The text in the Preview can now be exported to it's own PNG file using the Export button visible when in the preview view.
  • A second texture atlas can not be generated during export that displays the bounds of each glyph on the texture atlas. This is saved to the same location as the texture atlas PNG file with -output added to the filename
  • Export now supports the AngelCode XML format that can be used by frameworks such as Sparrow
  • Export now supports the font control file with the .txt file exntension that is used by the EZ GUI Unity plugin. This improves work flow when using Glyph Designer and EZ GUI
  • Internal bits and bobs for performance

New in Glyph Designer 1.2 Build 125 (Feb 7, 2011)

  • New:
  • Added the ability to drag an image onto the preview view
  • Added the ability to rotate the sample text in the preview view
  • Added the ability to set the size of the preview view
  • When saving a project any background image is embedded to make it easier to share
  • Redesigned the font tools. It's now possible to type in a size plus move a single point up and down using buttons
  • Now certified to work with the EZ GUI plugin for Unity 3D from Above and Beyond Software
  • Performance improvements
  • Fixed:
  • Fixed possible crash when clearing the included glyphs
  • The 'base' field in the font descriptor file is now calculated correctly

New in Glyph Designer 1.1 Build 110 (Jan 28, 2011)

  • New:
  • Gradient color swatches can now be dragged off the gradient to delete
  • Fixed:
  • Font list scroll view no longer cut off at the bottom
  • App no longer crashes on startup if the Arial Black font is missing or disabled