Do You Need a Font Tool?

very good
key review info
application features
  • A mouse move-sensitive zoom window
  • (5 more, see all...)

Most font managers are great tools, but most of them can't edit your fonts. Of course that for this particular purpose you need other applications. I am talking about font editors, of course, but this is going to be my next target today. Anyway, I got a program that is a text entry system which uses the non English fonts from your system and helps you write passages using them easily. This is the short story, the longer one comes next...

The target in sight at this moment is called Lipikar, and I got right here a version numbered 3.0.0, unfortunately still a Beta release, the third one, to be more precise. The good part is that you get this for free, and you can use it as much as you like, and the final version will be also a free one. The installation kit of this program is 4.6MB in size, and the setup process should be easy for everyone. Now, let's get to our regular tasks - interface and features.

Lipikar has a good interface that is easy to use and well organized, although it doesn't have anything special and, in terms of design, it may be considered a bit outdated. The main window of this application has three distinct areas - the Textboard, FontMap and View Area. Let's take them down one by one and see what they're up to!

First of all, the FontMap is a matrix used to display all typeable characters of the currently chosen font. When you hold your mouse pointer above one of the characters displayed here, you will be able to see it zoomed into the View Area, located above the FontMap. The program gives you the freedom to choose where to have it placed, to the right or to the left side of the interface.

At last, the Textboard is a basic text editor that allows you to preview the look of an entire paragraph that uses the selected font. Here, you can even load and save text from and into the files.

After you install this program and run it for the first time, you don't have to worry about anything special...just follow your instincts! Something that you probably won't figure out is the fact that Lipikar's Textboard can be used to write paragraphs of text and then paste them into your favorite Office application, preserving the font properties and alignment.

A feature currently under development is the ability to create, edit, save and load new font maps. The last thing that I want to tell you about here is the keyboard layout viewer, a window that displays the key bindings for the currently selected font. All I have to tell you about this is to go to the Tools menu, you'll find it there...and now, let's get to the conclusions!

The Good

Lipikar supports most font formats, as I was able to notice, it's extremely easy to use at first sight, and, of course...it's completely free!

The Bad

The Help file is missing, but you can check the small Readme.doc file that comes with the application. Some features are not implemented yet, such as editing the current character map, and you don't get any error message here. The result is that I found myself thrown out of the program a few times...and now I hardly wait to see this program's final release, I am sure it's going to be a good one!

The Truth

Until you get the perfect recipe, you have to taste the product countless times, and after tasting Lipikar, I can say that, after some seasoning and time spent "on fire", things will look just fine. For now, you can also have a free sample, so go ahead and taste the hot Lipikar!

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 4
features 3
ease of use 5
pricing / value 5


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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