Version 1.2 of hTools2 was officially released last week during RoboThon. This version contains many changes in relation to the initial alpha release, so I highly recommend users to upgrade.
RoboThon 2012
RoboThon was fantastic, as expected. I received great feedback about hTools from designers/developers I admire, learned many new things from the other presentations, and met some really cool people I only knew by name – all this in only two days.
For those who could not attend to the conference, the videos of all presentations are now available online – including my talk about hTools, which is also embedded below. The slides of my presentation are available here.
A big thanks to Erik van Blokland, Paul van der Laan and the Type&Media department for organizing the conference, and for inviting me to show my work.
hTools2 v1.2
Work on hTools v1.2 has been going on in the dev branch since January, and is now integrated back into master. The main visible change is the standardization of the dialogs into small vertical palettes, using the same basic layout and interface elements. So, instead of a random collection of dialogs, hTools now starts to look more like a coherent system, with a unified look-and-feel.
Another significant update is the new online documentation¹, covering the three main layers of hTools: modules, objects and dialogs. I have tried to include many examples, to make it easy for users to understand how things work.
The documentation includes a first version of the hTools object model, showing how the different objects in hTools connect and interact. This model is still in progress, and is likely to change in future iterations. There are also several new dialogs and functions, and a few new scripts to draw glyphs from .ufo fonts in a NodeBox canvas.
Next
I have no big plans for hTools at the moment, other than just using it for a while to get my own type-design work done. Finally.
If you are using the tools and have ideas for improvements, just drop me a message.
¹ This link is now broken, sorry. Meanwhile, there is a newer (unfinished) version here. The new new docs are now hosted in a github wiki.
² There is now also a hTools2 mailing list for support, questions and discussions.