Frequently Asked Questions

We get a lot of questions at FontLab. The comp.fonts FAQ answers a lot of these questions, so we've reproduced it here for your convenience. You can download or view it as either an ASCII text file or as a PDF file. In addition we have the font internationalization FAQ and some detailed articles written by experts in the field.

Q: I am having problems with the user interface of FontLab Studio 5 for Windows. Some icons are missing or mislabeled, or some windows do not appear

A: You can manually reset the user interface and the settings of FontLab Studio 5 for Windows. Make sure that FontLab Studio is not running. You need to open the Registry Editor to perform the changes: click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. navigate to the registry branch HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\FontLab\Studio5, click on "Studio5" and choose Edit / Delete.

After that, launch FontLab Studio and enter your serial number.

For more information about editing the Windows registry, check the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 322756 How to back up, edit, and restore the registry in Windows. Note: This article contains information about how to modify the registry. Make sure to back up the registry before you modify it. Make sure that you know how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up, restore, and modify the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows registry.

Q: In FontLab Studio 5 for Mac, the Output panel has "collapsed": only the top bar with the Close button is visible.

A: You can fix it manually. Go to your user Library/Application Support/FontLab/Studio 5/Workspaces folder, open the file CurrentWorkspace.rc in a plain text editor such as TextEditor. Find the string containing "196_Height" and change the height of the panel to some larger value, e.g. replace
196_Height 10
by
196_Height 200

Q: I am having problems with the user interface of FontLab Studio 5 for Mac OS X. Some icons are missing or mislabeled, or some windows do not appear

A: You can manually reset the user interface and the settings of FontLab Studio 5 for Mac OS X. For that, please quit FontLab Studio and then remove the files:

~/Library/Application Support/FontLab/Studio 5/Workspaces/CurrentWorkspace.rc
~/Library/Preferences/com.fontlab.fontlab5.plist

After that, launch FontLab Studio and enter your serial number. Note: ~ stands for your user folder, e.g. /Users/JohnDoe/