This came up rather randomly in CyanChat.

Fonts on my computer that happen to support the Interrobang: Arial Unicode MS, BlairMdITC TT, Bradley Hand ITC TT, Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel, Courier, DejaVu Sans Mono, DejaVu Serif, Geneva, Helvetica, Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, Meiryo, Mona Lisa Solid ITC TT, Monaco, MS Gothic, MS Mincho, Savoye LET, Stone Sans ITC TT, Stone Sans Sem ITC TT and Apple Symbols.

I would have been surprised if it had been even more than one or two. But more than two dozen? Nice!

Incidentally, myst-bert points to a list of fonts that support this character. Also, Butch confirms you can use AutoCorrect in OpenOffice.org and MS Office to automatically turn ?! and !? into ‽, for typographic effect.

This kind of thing would be great to have in SmartyPants and friends.

This came up rather randomly in CyanChat.

Fonts on my computer that happen to support the Interrobang: Arial Unicode MS, BlairMdITC TT, Bradley Hand ITC TT, Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel, Courier, DejaVu Sans Mono, DejaVu Serif, Geneva, Helvetica, Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, Meiryo, Mona Lisa Solid ITC TT, Monaco, MS Gothic, MS Mincho, Savoye LET, Stone Sans ITC TT, Stone Sans Sem ITC TT and Apple Symbols.

I would have been surprised if it had been even more than one or two. But more than two dozen? Nice!

Incidentally, myst-bert points to a list of fonts that support this character.

So I was discovering (again) just how much less of a hassle OmniGraffle is to work with compared to Microsoft Visio (2003, anyway), and ranting about it to Denis.

His response?

        --------------------
       /                    \\
 omnigraffle                |
      |                     |
      |          visio      |
      |                     |
       \\____________________/

OmniGraffle is running circles around Visio.

There’s a lot of problems with the folder icons in Leopard (and with folder behavior in general, particular with regard to stacks), such as the very faint embossed effect, such as with the new Music/Movies/Library/etc. icons (cf.), but what I found particularly bizarre is the grain, dirt, or whatever it is supposed to be.

I find myself liking Microsoft’s approach with Office 2008 a bit more. It brings back the slight translucency of the Tiger folder icons, and adds some faint, non-distracting curves that add a touch of vividness. At the same time, it adds a sharper stroke towards the top.

Or maybe I’m also just sick of the blue all over the place.

Everyone knows Fontographer. Then-owner Macromedia, however, stopped developing it in 1998. While FontLab bought it in 2005 (and resumed development), no major upgrade has been released since. It’s now OS X-native, but PowerPC-only; on Intel, it runs in Rosetta emulation.

FontLab also has their own font editor, named after the company. Or vice versa. Well, sorta; they renamed it FontLab Studio. OS X? Yes. Intel? No.

TypeTool. Also owned by FontLab. You can figure out the answers. Same for BitFont and AsiaFont Studio, but the font I’m trying to edit has nothing to do with Asia (or any surface Earth culture or continent, really), nor is it to be bitmap-based.

Good thing we have open source, right? Surely FontForge comes to the rescue.

Before you can start FontForge you must start the X11 server.

Oh.

So to recap, on an Intel Mac, you can choose between emulating a PowerPC Mac app (you better have tons of RAM), virtualizing a Windows Intel app (you better protect thyself), or running an X11 one “natively” (you’re best off blind).

I chose the first, but reluctantly so.

Perhaps there isn’t much demand for font editors; the few companies who can afford to produce high-quality fonts probably have their own in-house stuff. And thus, Macromedia stopped caring about their product, and FontLab easily became a monopolist. But is that an excuse for not having caught up with two and a half years ago?

That they even highlight the emulation means they’re either brazen (I suppose they can afford to be) or ignorant. “FontLab Studio 5, TypeTool 2, BitFonter 2, TransType, Fontographer 4.7 and [their] other Mac OS X applications” don’t run on Intel Macs because FontLab put any effort into them doing so, but because Apple did. And while Rosetta is a fine transition solution, it was never intended as anything more than that.

There is hope yet: much like I expect Adobe to shed some of its recently-accumulated arrogance now that Chizen is finally gone (yeah, that guy), perhaps FontLab will eventually come to its senses and start caring about its customers. By not having the most ridiculous software update download process I’ve seen in a long time, for instance.

P.S.: the 1990s have called; they want their BinHex back.