With this in mind, we recently made an important and relevant part of our own internal testing procedures available to the public QA project Fontspector. In addition to test profiles from Microsoft, Adobe, and Google, there is now also a Fontwerk profile.
As a small independent foundry, to be part of this feels both wild and wonderful, and proves that with a little commitment, even small players can have a big impact.
Fontspector is a further development of the Fontbakery program, which is popular among type designers. While Fontbakery was based on Python, Fontspector uses Rust as its programming language.
Fontbakery will continue to exist, but the tool will no longer be updated (that includes our profile there). It will be replaced by Fontspector, which, thanks to Rust—and the associated possibility of using the open standard WebAssembly—is significantly more user-friendly and enormously more powerful.
While Fontbakery could take several minutes to test a single font, Fontspector can evaluate entire font families in a matter of seconds. Another significant advantage is the ability to integrate Rust and therefore Fontspector into a website as WebAssembly, which greatly increases user-friendliness. With Python and FontBakery, some basic programming skills were required, because it could only be used via ‘Command Line’ command after installing Python and FontBakery. This is still possible with Fontspector, but the focus is on a website (fonttools.github.io/fontspector) where font files can be conveniently tested through drag and drop without any prior programming knowledge.
Neither program is an official Google project, but both were partially funded by the tech giant and developed by lead developers Simon Cozens (Fontspector) and Felipe Corrêa da Silva Sanches as well as Lasse Fister (both Fontbakery). Smaller organizations and individuals can also support development with their own resources in line with their own interests. We have now done this in partnership with our friend and colleague Olli Meier, who is now working as a freelancer, and we would be delighted if our modest contribution were to be put to good use.