Thanks to a post on Twitter from @motaitalic, I just found out about this beta version of a new font editor, Glyphs: http://schriftgestaltung.de/glyphs/about.html. (Unfortunately, it is not available for Windows.)

Very nice and simple interface! So far, I like the look and feel of it. For example, notice how the font window shows the glyphs in alphabetic order (above). You can also sort the glyphs by Unicode or older code pages, symbols, punctuation, etc. which is very handy.

The glyph window is very simple and uncluttered, and far more soothing (can I use that description?) than FontLab's interface:

Very nice, I think! It generates ("exports") fonts in .OTF and .UFO formats, so that they could be imported into FontLab to generate other formats. (Although I'm thinking that starting in 2010, I might only provide OTF fonts.)

Ok, I haven't had the time to play with this much yet, as I just downloaded it a few minutes ago. But, the good thing is that it gives FontLab some competition, so maybe they will work a little harder and faster to come out with an update to buggy FontLab Studio. In any case, give this a try and see what you think. Hey, it's free; you have nothing to lose.

Check back here for updates, as I find time to experiment more with this. Or, better yet, leave a comment with your own experiences.

UPDATE: Ok, it only took me about an hour to crash Glyphs. (I'm pretty good at breaking software.) And I wasn't able to figure out how to do some basic things (perhaps they're not implemented yet). But, I really like the interface a lot. Very elegant, especially compared to FontLab, which seems downright ugly in comparison. So, I really hope this evolves into a full-fledged, high-powered font editor, or that the people at FontLab are looking at this and getting some ideas about what an interface should look like ... or both. Would be great to have a couple competing, high-end font editors! I know it's a niche market, but I think type designers deserve to have better software than what's available at the moment. At least we could be more productive if we weren't spending so much time recovering from crashes and such. Ok, having said that, let me add that I'm very thankful to have FontLab Studio. I fired up my old copy of Fontographer recently, and couldn't believe how clunky it looked in comparison! But, even that antiquated piece of software made it possible for me to pursue a new career. So, I'm not going to gripe too much.