User Guide

By 1989, Fontographer was getting better and better. Things
like remove overlap, correct path direction, merge point, the
ability to generate Type 1 fonts and more, were all making
it a pleasure to design fonts for the first time in my life.
The Mac was getting more powerful and there were a lot
of graphic designers, droves in fact, moving to the Mac. But
they were constrained in their graphic design by the limited
availability of fonts on the Mac. When Fontographer got
hinted generation of Type 1 fonts into the market in 1990,
the font world was truly changed. By this time I had left
Bitstream to concentrate fully on The Font Bureau, the type
design company I have founded with Roger Black. We
released our first retail fonts that year. The general
impression was that they were as good as any fonts
available for the Mac. Needless to say, Altsys had become
my best friend. Throughout these years, from 1985 to 1990,
the most astonishing thing to me was that Altsys was
constantly improving the features, performance and ease-of-
use of Fontographer in spite of the fact that there was no
competition in the field for Fontographer. When competition
and a larger user base developed, Altsys went into
overdrive. Through Fontographer 3.0 and 3.5, TrueType
and PC font generation, improved printing functionality,
Multiple Masters, change weight, and all the rest—Altsys
was always doing the right things at the right time for all the
right reasons. Today, you have before you the next
generation of this great tool. Macromedia Fontographer 4.1
is a truly revolutionary change in the quality and
functionality of type design tools. Letter spacing is treated
like a database, scaling, rotation, skewing and such are
totally interactive functions, and autotrace is amazing! The
Font Bureau tested and tempted itself with version 4 as
soon as the specification came to us in 1991. Throughout
our review and use of version 4, we had the feeling that we
had only scratched the surface of what it can do for type
designers like us. In the coming year we think we’ll be
finding out that we’ve got a tiger by the tail—again!
Good luck to all, and thanks to the Fontographer team!
Introducing Fontographer
Welcome to Fontographer!
First of all, thank you for buying our product. Second, thanks
Fontographer User's Manual
Introduction Page #3