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DTL OTMaster & CompareMaster

v1.02 (19 Oct 2010) / v1.0 (10 Feb 2009)

OTMaster

If you need to inspect or modify binary CFF-based or TT-based OpenType fonts but do not feel comfortable with command-line tools like TTX, you may have a look at DTL OTMaster. In addition to table editing functionality, it offers a Glyph Viewer to check and adjust all data around individual glyphs (like glyph names and Unicode codepoints), a Glyph Editor to edit outlines, a 'GPOS'/'GSUB' Viewer to visually proof individual lookups' layout behavior and adjust metric values in 'GPOS' lookups, a 'kern' Table Viewer to adjust the 'kern' table, a Glyph Copy Tool to copy individual glyphs from font to font.
OTMaster can compile layout feature definitions in AFDKO-syntax via its Import function. But make sure that the feature file does not contain syntax or other errors because the feedback which OTMaster gives is not as extensive as that of AFDKO's MakeOTF!
Type designers now have a variety of tools at hand:
• Those who can script or program may write binary font tables directly (I do this with 'cmap' and 'kern' tables), or adjust specific tables' entries during the font generation process or afterwards with help of Letterror's Python library called FontTools.
• Another option is the command-line tool TTX (which is a wrapper around the before-mentioned FontTools): Dump binary fonts into XML-style text files, edit them in a text editor, and convert them into binary fonts again.
• Finally, OTMaster makes it easy to edit fonts' table data in a usual user interface. (Even though I do most font modifications by scripts and FontTools right in my font generation workflow, I do not want to miss OTMaster any more. It is pretty comfortable for checking if a font editor generated fonts correctly, tracking down bugs, and correcting them.)[1]
P.S. OTMaster 2.3 can be licensed from FontLab too now!

CompareMaster

The light version of DTL CompareMaster can only compares PST1 fonts. The full version can also compare CFF-based OpenType fonts.

Further reading

Official information about DTL OTMaster.
License OTMaster from DTL or FontLab.
Download the light (i.e. demo) version of OTMaster.
Announcement and discussion on Typophile and Slanted.
A detailed review has been written by Thomas Phinney.



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