otm 8(.9) development delay

Making otm 8.9 took some more time than planned. An important reason is that the development team is getting older (62–70+) and hence a little more vulnerable. Hartmut, one of the four team members in particular indispensable for complexities such as the ot Layout features subsetting, became serious ill a few years ago and could not work at all since then.

DTL Font Tools Development Team
On the photo (rtl): Jürgen, Axel, Hartmut, and Frank.

End of October 2021 dtl’s founder Frank had a heart attack and therefore open-heart surgery, which resulted in five bypasses. Moreover, because it is so advanced, otm is not an easy and far from cheap application to develop. It is probably no coincidence that there is not a directly comparable tool for macOS, Windows, and Linux on the market.

 

otm 8 under development

If everything goes well, autumn this year otm 8 will be released. This edition contains additional functionality, for example, enhanced support for ttc/otc fonts, the option to edit the stem-snap arrays and stdhw values in the cff Header, and also trackpad gestures.

For the ttc/otc support the TrueType Collection Editor has been added. If one opens this tool, one will get an overview which tables are contained in which ttf font and which tables are shared. The window has a scrollbar to display all ttf fonts even if the number is very large. Also included are options to share tables with drag and drop, or to change a table and apply these changes to all fonts which share this table.

Those who purchased otm 7.9 in 2019 will be entitled to receive a free upgrade to version 8.