FontLab 8.4.2 Build 8950

What's new in this version:

Optical Separation of open contours:
- New If you select a vector drawing in the Glyph window or on the Sketchboard, and perform Element > Optically Separate, FontLab splits the non-overlapping parts of the vector drawing into separate elements. You can control how this works in Preferences > Operations > Optical separation. New Now, optical separation correctly splits centerline vector images (open contours).

Importing Metrics:
- New You can now correctly import metrics data from JSON files, you can now import metrics for multiple masters simultaneously, and you can import metrics expressions from JSON files

Copying Metrics between masters:
New You can now copy the numeric value of a glyph metric (the advance width, the left sidebearing or the right sidebearing) of the current glyph from the current master to all other masters. To do that:
- In the Widget field for the glyph metric, choose ⋮ > Copy to Masters
- Or in the Glyph panel, click the Copy … to masters button next to the glyph metric field
- Previously, these operations only copied the metric if it was an expression

Kerning matching and interpolation:
- New If a master is an intermediate master on one axis but an edge master on another axis, FontLab now correctly interpolates values for kerning pairs that are not defined in the master. This works with Match Kerning and during export. Previously, undefined kerning pairs were assumed to be 0 in this case.
- New Match Kerning now prioritizes kerning classes from the default master. If no kerning classes are found in the default master, it will use kerning classes from one of the corner masters. This addresses situations where kerning data is defined in the corners of the design space and needs to be interpolated for the default master.

Font Info overview:
- New In the Font Info dialog, the Overview page now lets you easily see entries that differ across masters
- For each row that often has identical values across all masters, FontLab highlights the row with yellow background if the values differ. In addition, if most masters have one particular value but there are some obvious outliers (values that occur much less often), FontLab will highlight these outliners with red text. FontLab won’t do this comparison for rows that typically have different values like Style name.
- If you edit some values in the Overview page, you need to click Apply or switch to another Font Info page and back to refresh the highlights

Tip:
The Font Info > Overview section works like a spreadsheet: you can copy-paste values between cells, and even select rectangular areas, copy values, paste them into a spreadsheet app like Excel or Numbers, and back.

Font dimensions colors:
- New In Preferences > Grid, Guides & Hints, you can now change the color of the font dimension lines as shown in the Glyph window. This way, you can make the Ascender, Caps Height, x Height and Descender lines more or less visible in the Glyph window canvas. You no longer can change the color of the font dimension lines in the property bar, as this was not properly working.

Font window:
- New In the Font window sidebar, the Search History section is now called History

Ghost hints linked to nodes:
- New If you have a ghost hint linked to a node, and you flip the contour, FontLab will flip the ghost hint as well

xed:
- Fix If you link a hint or guide to a node, you can undo that operation
- Fix When you switch the focus between left and right kerning classes in the Glyph panel, the Classes panel now correctly activates the corresponding class in the list of classes
- Fix FontLab now correctly imports kerning when you open an ZIP archive that contains old Mac Type 1 suitcases
- Fix If you use the repeater glyph in Glyph window, Echo Text now correctly works in the Preview panel