Another spin-off from the dialogue with Rick Bradley is that I've looked anew at the world of font-producing software; the one I was using, Fontographer, hasn't been developed for 10 years and its interface was rather old-fashioned even then, little changed from when it was new in 1984. In the meantime a new programme appeared and in a few years became established as the only professional tool - FontLab; it's also the only independent programme which produces OpenType fonts - that's the wonderful new standard evolved by Adobe and Microsoft and fully implemented by Apple, which gives you a vast number of glyphs (signs, characters) for each font, so that they work in every culture and language (including alphabets based on Latin with special extras, like Swedish, Polish, Czech etc., as well as non-Latin script systems) and give you lots of extras like ligatures ('st', 'ss' and 'ct' joined up), swashes, ornaments, symbols: you name it, OpenType can do it ... The animation at the top of this page shows you how it updates dynamically to reflect your changing choice of letters and swashes and so on.

I tried out FontLab and its stable-companions ScanFont and TypeTool and after a week had become completely hooked on it and didn't see how I could live without it: just as an example:

• in Fontographer to just do the basics of creating a new font from scanned originals, like your handwriting or a renaissance alphabet
  • you click and drag to select a single character in Photoshop
  • you select [cmnd+C] to copy
  • you click with the mouse to switch to Fontographer
  • you click with the mouse to select Fontographer's template layer
  • you click to paste in
  • you click to select the outline layer
  • you press [cmnd+shift+T] to select auto-trace
    • that's 7 mouse-clicks or key-strokes for each of perhaps 100 characters, that's about 700 clicks (still without any polishing):
• with FontLab and ScanFont together
  • you click once to ask it to identify the separate letters in your scanned page
  • you click once to export the vector-outlines to FontLab
    • and that's it ... two clicks. And the result is about five times better, so you need to do much less hand-tweaking afterwards.

The same company has licensed Fontographer from its previous owners Macromedia, and made a Mac OS X version; but for me at least it's still a 20 year-old concept with a bit of a face-lift, even under OS X it feels like a system 7 programme. It's still very powerful, of course, and half the price of FontLab; but FontLab gives you smooth outlines, buttons, navigation aids, properties palettes, template outlines in the main font window, OpenType, FontAudit (the programme warns you of irregularities that might cause problems), a feeling of being fully-equipped to face the future - and something a bit diffuse but very strong: a feeling of being the loved and cared for baby of a team of very remarkable people.

I had no prospect of finding $700 to buy FontLab and ScanFont, but at the same time was I responding to the programming team's request for feedback on their programmes, and feeling rather well appreciated for it - I gather they seldom meet that desirable combination of technical understanding, artistic feel, and articulate expression ... so now I've just signed an agreement to become one of those who tests the development version of the programme and gives feedback, in return for a free copy of the programme plus all support and dialogue with the geeks ... I've done it often enough before, but on a rather more humble scale: and it feels very special to be valued by the people producing this major commercial programme, the only professional player in the international field for both Mac and Windows. Remarkably enough the programmes are developed under Windows and then the Mac versions are done afterwards: but they are so well done, you would think they were Mac OS X originals. It's truly international: the programmers are Russian, living in Petersburg, Adam Twardoch, my main contact in the FontLab world, in Polish living in Germany, Ted the CEO is somewhere outside of Seattle in Washington State. And they are committed to their programmes working equally well in all cultures, with all script systems, Asian as well as European...

And the guys in the world of typography and fonts are so delightful - the perfect integration of wide and deep knowledge, cross-cultural and historical awareness, artistic sensibility and great humility ... Listen to Adam, for example, or read some of his writings. This goes for the Microsoft typography team too - I can't quite imagine that there's any other unit within that corporation which says their goal is to make the world a better place.