A new Coldtype — & an ST2 beta
Any testers out there?
Though I’ve been on paternity leave recently (two months tomorrow!), I sometimes get to sneak in work on Coldtype when the little one is taking a nap. For some reason I can work on Coldtype in 15 minute increments and still get something done, which is unlike, well, every other project I’ve ever worked on.
The upshot: some slightly improved documentation, as well as a new version of the core Coldtype python library: version 0.10.0 introduced some nice little improvements and a much better Coldtype-to-Blender workflow, but then I realized some things were broken or needed extra tweaking, so now we’re at 0.10.3.
Oh and I wrote a blog post about Truchet tiles just before I went on paternity leave. And before that, I gave a talk at the inScript festival, all about my work doing 3D typography, specifically getting Coldtype to work with Blender, which is a good segue into some news about ST2, the Blender typography addon powered by Coldtype.
A few days ago I had a brain wave as I was falling asleep (at my new bedtime of 9:30pm): I realized, maybe, I could avoid having ST2 modify Blender’s embedded python installation. So when I woke up in the small hours the next morning, I snuck in a little work and pulled together a version of ST2 that does just that. The upside: it’s easier to install and better for lots of boring reasons. Downside: I’m not totally sure it works on all computers. So if you’re looking for something to do, why not try testing out ST2 v0.9 by downloading it from the new (in-development) ST2 site?
Oh and if you’re on a Mac, the new ST2 will let you search system-installed fonts (including ones from services like Fontstand & Adobe Fonts). I tried to get that feature working on Windows, but — wow — that turned out to be very difficult. I’m sure I’ll try again at some point, though.
That’s all for now — thanks for being subscribed to a newsletter about an esoteric typography programming library! I’m not a natural when it comes to telling people about stuff I’m doing, but I promise to do more of that in the future, either here or in some kind of video tutorial. And if there’s something you’d wish I’d explain about Coldtype or ST2, let me know!
-Rob