Hibizcus helps detect cases where a mark may be in the wrong position, a half form may miss kerning in order to join a full form or other subtle positioning errors that can be fixed by touching up the glyphs in the font editor.
In version 1.1 of Hibizcus, we’re adding the ability to copy the glyph names and paste them into the text mode of Glyphs app so you can fix anchors, correct kerning or extend strokes.
In earlier versions, we only had the ‘Copy text’ button which copies the Unicode string of the text. When the copied text is then pasted, it showed only the Unicode characters in the string. It did not show the outcome of the shaping process, where some characters may have been substituted, reordered or inserted. The new ‘Copy names’ feature will copy the glyph names of the shaped results instead of the original Unicode string. When pasted, the actual glyphs used to construct the text are shown. The copied names can be pasted into the text mode of Glyphs app for editing. I’m still exploring ways to paste these names into other font editors.
Other features in Hibizcus 1.1
Here are some other things I’ve added to the new version:
- Added cluster data for the Brahmi script. Wordlist for this script can be picked from Sanskrit and Tamil. Both these languages will cover all of the Brahmi letters.
- Added Previous and Next buttons to the ‘Glyph View’ so you can easily move to the previous or next glyph in the collection to check if they are shaped correctly or compare them with another font.
- Added support for multiple selections in all of FontViewer’s tabs. When opened with multiple selections, StringViewer and TraceViewer will show all selected items. The items will be separated by space.
- Append to test string in StringViewer and TraceViewer when additional items from FontViewer are dragged and dropped into them.
- Allowed changing the cell size in FontViewer.
- Fixed a bug that prevented watching for changes in the font file.
- Show Unicode names of characters in the selected cell.
- Show Unicode name of selected vowel sign in cluster tab.
- Highlight differences more visibly when comparing fonts.
- Fixed a bug that caused Hibizcus to crash when opening some fonts.
- Fixed a few other minor bugs.
Included below are screen shots showing some new features. Eagerly look forward to your feedback!
