Bezier editing
Selection and Direct Selection tools for contours, nodes, handles and segments, with node insertion and precise nudging.
Feature inventory
Deep tools for drawing, engineering and testing Thaana fonts.
The important capabilities of Dhivehi Font Studio, organized by what they do - without the step-by-step manual.
01 · Drawing & outlines
A complete vector glyph editor.
Build clean outlines directly in the studio or integrate vectors from an existing design workflow.
Pen, Pencil & Power Brush
Bezier Pen, freehand Pencil and live-width Power Brush with Round, Broad, Chisel, Brush Pen, Tapered, Marker and custom presets.
Cutouts & shape tools
Cutout Pen / Stroke plus line, rectangle, ellipse and polygon construction for fast structural drawing.
Vector editing
Eraser, Knife, Scissors, booleans, overlap removal, direction correction, expand stroke, simplify, offset, flip and slant.
Components
Create reusable component instances, move them independently and decompose or edit the component master when needed.
Illustrator & SVG workflow
Desktop paste from Illustrator, Paste Special, Paste & Fit to Thaana Body and Copy as SVG.
Metrics & measurement
Drag sidebearings and advance width, measure distance / angle, use H / V / angled guides and inspect on-canvas metric HUDs.
Reference overlays
Overlay a reference font or ligature source glyphs while drawing, with filled / outline preview modes and mirror view.
02 · Tracing & metrics
Move from scanned reference to controlled vectors.
Tracing, spacing and metrics are separate focused environments so outline work and spacing decisions do not get mixed together.
Manual tracing workspace
Import PNG, JPEG or WebP underlays with fit, replace, relink and remove controls.
Image cleanup
Brightness, contrast, threshold, invert, background removal, deskew and baseline / x-height calibration.
Vector cleanup
Simplify, smooth, remove specks, fix winding, use symmetry and transfer finished vectors into Drawing.
Spacing workspace
Advance width and sidebearings with a repeated RTL view of the current character for rhythm decisions.
Font metrics
Italic angle, ascender, descender, UPM and OS/2-related dimensions with dedicated preview modes.
Thaana metrics
Body top / bottom, overshoots and shared top / bottom anchor guides designed specifically around Thaana.
03 · RTL kerning
Pair engineering built for logical and visual RTL order.
The kerning system treats logical First → Second pairs as the source of truth while showing their visual RTL placement clearly on screen.
Thaana letter × letter, letter × digit, punctuation and ligature pairs
Independent reverse pairs
Auto Kern All / selected pairs
Multi-select editing and pair search
IgnoreMarks-aware GPOS PairPos
Live sample preview using all adjusted pairs
04 · OpenType & ligatures
Substitutions designed around real Thaana text.
Ligature creation, OpenType source and export behavior are connected to the glyphs and testing environment instead of existing as an isolated technical table.
OpenType workspace
Editable FEA-style source with Thaana-oriented mark, mkmk, rlig, liga and kern templates.
Text-driven ligatures
Create or open ligature glyphs from selected text in Font Testing, with source-glyph reference support.
Base & exact ligatures
Support for base-only substitutions that can ignore marks and exact mark-inclusive sequences where the fili sequence matters.
Word-oriented shaping
Ligature substitutions can be represented across liga, rlig and ccmp behavior for more dependable Thaana shaping.
Kerning integration
Ligature glyphs can participate in the pair system instead of living outside the rest of the font's spacing model.
Live testing
liga, kern, mark and mkmk toggles make it easier to isolate shaping behavior while the project is still open.
05 · Fili & anchor engineering
Dedicated attachment tools for Thaana marks.
Fili are treated as Thaana combining marks with dedicated filters, diagnostics and alignment tools.
Anchor model
Main letters use top / bottom anchors while fili and sukun use _top / _bottom mark anchors.
Anchor Manager
Review per-glyph Top X/Y and Bottom X/Y, shared levels, linked values and manual overrides without moving outlines.
Fili Matrix
A base × fili diagnostic grid flags missing anchors, collisions, spacing problems and incorrect vertical relationships.
Fili Manager
Align top or bottom mark-anchor levels across combining marks while keeping main-letter anchors separate.
MarkToBase output
Base and mark anchors compile to GPOS MarkToBase when the project contains the required attachment data.
Kerning + liga interaction
Combining marks are classified so base-pair kerning and base ligatures can skip fili where the rule requires it.
06 · Proofing, testing & QA
Inspect the font before it leaves the studio.
Proofing and Font Testing are separate tools: one focuses on visual quality, the other on the live compiled font behavior.
Proofing
White-on-black, pixel grid, squint, blur, ink spread and 8–14 px small-text inspection.
Raster comparisons
Compare vector outline, grayscale raster, subpixel-style and black / white pixel views.
Font Testing
Compile the live project in memory and test it without relying on an installed Windows font.
RTL / LTR / auto
Control direction, alignment, size and leading while testing real sample strings.
Feature isolation
Toggle liga, kern, mark and mkmk during testing to understand shaping behavior.
QA tools
Font Health Check, Dhivehi QA, alignment checks, Engineer panels and the Dhivehi Font Assistant.
07 · Dhivehi / Islamic publishing details
Special glyph support that matters in real documents.
Important codepoints are represented as deliberate font-production slots, not generic placeholders.
U+FDF2
Allah
Dedicated mapped glyph slot with export coverage intended to reduce fallback behavior in compatible document workflows.
U+FDFD
Bismillah
A dedicated empty-by-design slot ready for the designer's own artwork and included in built-in proofing samples.
U+20C2
Rufiyaa Sign
Dedicated currency-symbol glyph support with reference artwork and export mapping for the Maldivian Rufiyaa sign.
08 · Compile & export
Production output, not just a drawing canvas.
Validate the project, inspect compile information and export standard desktop font formats with layout data when available.
TrueType TTFQuadratic desktop font output
CFF OpenType OTFReal cubic CFF desktop font output
GPOSMarkToBase + PairPos kerning
GSUBliga / rlig / ccmp substitutions
Core tablescmap, hmtx, name, OS/2 and related data
Development status
Clear about what is still in progress.
The website distinguishes current production features from engineering previews and future export work.
Variable design tools
Masters, interpolation, axis mapping, named instances and variable kerning preview are present; variable TTF / OTF export is not yet shipped.
WOFF2 / web packaging
Desktop TTF and OTF export are current; WOFF2 export is not yet part of the export dialog.
Tracing automation
The tracing workspace is manual today; automatic vectorization and batch tracing are not yet shipped.