Fontanalyzer.app is the result of my PhD work at AFAD, Bratislava, Slovakia University. The project stems from a long-standing frustration with the need to perform manual, repetitive checks on every font or family of fonts. The democratization of the font industry has brought a broad public into the field, yet there are only a few QA tools available—and none that are easily usable or understandable for beginners, students, or designers. Not everyone is comfortable with command-line interfaces or installing advanced tools (and paying for them), which inspired my research into QA stages, tools, and checks that could be automated into a user-friendly solution.
This online application provides basic QA checks in an intuitive environment tailored to students, designers, and engineers, each with their own specialized view. Fontanalyzer.app is free and accessible to anyone using any system. Furthermore, it will be open-source, enabling users to implement custom versions according to their needs. Later on the develpoment also in this tool, there will be a customized section for schools and studios, offering custom checks to suit their specific requirements.
Currently, the core logic of the application is complete, but not all tests have been implemented. I am actively seeking users for UX testing and to discuss the usability of the tools and checks provided. The ultimate goal of Fontanalyzer.app is to raise the bar of technical quality of font production by making quality assurance tools freely available to everyone.
Jan Charvat