see dtl’s ExquisiteFonts website!

| Home | Search | Site index | About | Contact |

The Dutch Type Library has been producing digital fonts since the late 1980s. As font production at dtl became more professional and complex, the need for specialized font software grew. In the second half of the 1990s, dtl began developing its proprietary tools for professional font production, running on macOS, Windows, and Linux. In fact, the dtl font tools have a long history that actually dates back to the early 1970s, when the digitization of resolution-independent contours began with the invention by Dr. Peter Karow of the ikarus format.


        The gui of dtl FoundryMaster

The first (semi-)professional font-production tools used at the Dutch Type Library before the official start of the company, were Ikarus m for manually digitizing analog artwork in 1987, and Fontographer for editing cubic Bézier splines about a year later. However, both applications lacked the control and batch functionality needed to produce the dtl fonts. Eventually the dtl FontMaster modules became available. It is a collection of modules and includes applications for designing and editing letters in the Bézier and ikarus formats, scanning and auto-tracen of letters and logos, generating kerning pairs, testing and correcting glyph contours, interpolating font data, and generating and converting font formats. Batch functions make it possible to process large amounts of data at once.


        Spacing and kerning in dtl gposMaster

dtl FoundryMaster (fm2) is the advanced successor for macOS, Windows, and Linux to the dtl FontMaster (fm) suite, which was officially released in 2001. Much of the functionality of fm has been ported to fm2, but also new advanced tools have been added. The ikarus format can be found under the hood of fm2 still. dtl FoundryMaster, in line with its ikarus-based predecessors, is primarily a font editor for the more tech-savvy type designers and font producers. Indeed, everything can be controlled in detail and adapted to the user’s needs: shortcuts, display size, color, the tools palette, the accuracy of the conversion from cubic to quadratic Bézier splines, font encoding, etc.


        dtl OTMaster can be used for checking and modifying OpenType en TrueType fonts

The current flagship of the dtl font tools is without a doubt OTMaster (otm). This is a very advanced post-production application for reviewing, editing, and modifying tables and glyphs of fonts with an sfnt file structure. otm is the multifunctional ‘Swiss knife’ for professional font production. It is used by many experts in the field and applied by some of the largest companies in the software industry, including Adobe.

        More information

Search | Site index | Contact | Terms of use | Trademarks | Acknowledgements

Last update: 18 November 2024. Copyright © Dutch Type Library, 1998–2024. All rights reserved

dtl Headquarters | Zwaenenstede 49 | 5221 kc ’s-Hertogenbosch | The Netherlands
dtl Studio | Daliënwaerd 71 | 5221 ke ’s-Hertogenbosch | The Netherlands
phone: +31 (0)73 614 95 36 | fax: +31 (0)73 613 98 23 | e-mail: info@dutchtypelibrary.com