FontCreator Home Edition 6.5

'FontCreator Home Edition' is a professional font editor. It allows you to create and edit your custom 'TrueType' fonts. Before starting to use this program, I strongly recommend you to read the 'Help' file or the 134 page long 'Font Creator Manual'. Although is a very complex software, it is somewhat easy to use. If you want to create your custom font, the program offers you a window full of little boxes. Each one of these boxes belongs to a specific character, so you only need to draw the character in that box and it will be saved automatic. You can draw approximately 653 different characters. This program supports both Microsoft and Macintosh platforms. If you don't want to create all characters, you might open an already existing font and copy the other characters.

While creating your own font, if you don't like your last commands you should now that your undo, redo, or repeat commands are unlimited. If some fonts are displayed incorrectly, you can correct them. An interesting feature is that you can scan your own signature and convert it into a glyph. While editing glyphs you can "zoom in" to get a close-up view or "zoom out" to get a better overall view. You can use the edit field located on the 'Drawing' toolbar to change the zoom percentage. The 'Zoom to Selected' button will be enabled as soon as points or contours are selected. Pressing this button will zoom into the current selection. When you press the 'Fit to Window' button, the glyph will be shown with the largest zoom factor. In this window, you'll also see an ascender and a descender limiting line, which enables you to keep the lowercase letters and uppercase letters standardized.

The user interface is very intuitive. The toolbars give you a one-click access to many of the commands on the menus. Some menu items have toolbar icons next to them so that you can quickly associate the command with that icon.

Pluses: Unlimited undo, redo, and repeat option. You can drag-and-drop glyphs from the sample template into your own font.

Drawbacks / flaws: You can't draw cursive characters freely, instead you can create them only with lines and curves.

In conclusion: If you have a lot of spare time or if you like to create your own custom font, I think you might like it.

version reviewed: 5.5