SuperTool Plug-in Now Open Source

Blog
by Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

8 August 2019

We are happy to report that the popular SuperTool plug-in, also advertised on our Extend page, has been open-sourced with the help of Google Fonts.

SuperTool by Corvel Software incorporates a couple of functionalities that have proven essential in type design:

  • a curvature visualisation, much like SpeedPunk,
  • a harmonisation algorithm for consecutive curve segments,
  • ‘Tunni lines’, a visual variant of Fit Curve,
  • a path simplification algorithm, available through SuperTool’s context menu,
  • and ‘Callipers’, stem thickness visualisation.

Install SuperTool

As of today, Simon’s SuperTool is also available in Window > Plugin Manager, which means it is available for one-click installation. After clicking the Install button and restarting Glyphs once, it is available in the tool bar at the top of the window. Enjoy!

Activate it by clicking on the SuperTool icon in the toolbar. Access settings through the context menu (right- or Ctrl-click).

About Simon

English developer, Corvel Software founder and aspiring type designer Simon Cozens has written numerous scripts for Glyphs, plus a few plug-ins, most of which are available via Window > Plugin Manager. He is also contributing to the Glyphs app code.

Among Glyphs users, Simon is most known for three things:

  1. the SuperTool plug-in, going open source now,
  2. GlyphSILE, a Harfbuzz-based typesetter, available in the Plugin Manager, which can also render complex scripts,
  3. and his recent research into putting together a neural-network based autokerning algorithm, AtoKern.

Thanks

In the name of the Glyphs community, we want to thank Simon for taking this step, and Google Fonts for supporting the project. Special thanks to Dave Crossland for making this happen.