Four months after the release of RoboFont3.2, we’re happy to announce that the first public beta of RoboFont 3.3 is out.

Download it now from the Downloads page.

This release is packed with new features and bug fixes. Here are some of the highlights:

New banner notifications

Messages are now shown using macOS notifications instead of alert windows. A small change which saves clicks and improves the user experience.

Notifications are unobtrusive: they appear at the top right of the screen and disappear automatically after a few seconds.

You can also use them in your tools and scripts:

from mojo.UI import PostBannerNotification
PostBannerNotification("hello world", "Welcome to RoboFont!")

Support for anchor and guideline colors

This release adds support for displaying individual guideline and anchor colors in the Glyph Editor.

The Inspector panel has a new Guidelines section, where color and other guideline attributes can be edited. Anchor colors can be edited in the Inspector too.

This feature was added in response to a question in the Forums.

New index color preferences

Speaking of colors: the index labels for different types of objects (points, segments, contours, components) can now have different colors.

The new color settings are available in Preferences > Glyph View > Appearance.

New diff view for external glyph changes

The Updates Found window has been improved with a new diff view for visualising external changes to glyphs:

The diff popup can be opened by clicking on a glyph name in the list of changed glyphs. Green lines show the external glif XML data, red lines show the current glyph data which will be modified.

This feature was added in response to a [request in the Forums].

[request in the Forums]: http://forum.robofont.com/topic/587/feature-request-visual-previews-in-the-updates-found-popup

Extension expiration date and markdown docs

Extension metadata files can now include an expiration date attribute, allowing developers to create trial versions of their extensions.

The ExtensionBundle object now also supports documentation sources in Markdown format. If available, Markdown files are converted to HTML when the extension is built. A default stylesheet is applied, but you can also provide your own.

See the Boilerplate Extension and Building Extensions for updated documentation and examples.


Other changes in this version include:

  • add missing glyphs as template glyphs when sorting by character set
  • improvements to group kerning in the Kern Center
  • support for drag & drop in canvas views
  • new flat UI style for accordion views
  • anchors snapping to contour points
  • updated embedded libraries

See the version history for the complete list of changes.

A big thanks to all beta testers and users providing feedback on the Forum!

Last edited on 01/09/2021