Download and unzip Autopsy. Copy Autopsy.py and the User Guide PDF into FontLab’s Macro folder, which is usually located at:
Mac: /Library/Application Support/FontLab/Studio 5/Macros/
Windows:
C:\Program Files\FontLab\Studio5\Macros\
Install ReportLab Toolkit
ReportLab is the open source PDF generation toolkit used by Autopsy. You will have to install it only once. If you are just updating Autopsy, just download Autopsy, not ReportLab.
on Mac OS X Download and un-zip the archive. Copy the folder reportlab and the file _rl_accel.so into Python’s site-packages folder, which is usually located at /Library/Python/2.3/site-packages
on Windows: Download and un-zip the archive.
reportlab contains the ReportLab Toolkit for PDF generation. Take the whole directory and put it as sub-directory into your Python installation’s site-packages directory usually located at C:\Python23\Lib\site-packages\. DLLs contains pre-compiled libraries of ReportLab which act as accelerators for PDF generation. This is not necessary but highly recommended for any serious use of Autopsy. Take the files from this directory and put them into C:\Python23\DLLs\. These are compiled for a specific version of Python. If for some reason you are using a different version of Python with FontLab than 2.3.5., please go to ReportLab’s download page (section ‘Precompiled DLLs’ at the bottom) and download the right version for your Python and use these files instead.
The User Interface
Single Master Mode
If you haven’t heard of Multiple Master yet, then this is probably where you’re going to land if you start Autopsy.
Page orientation
Depending on what you are most interested in to see about your fonts, you can choose between Portrait and Lanscape. Portrait will set the glyphs underneath each other. This view is most suitable if you want to compare widths of glyphs. Landscape will set glyphs next to each other on a line.
Draw metrics
This will draw the metrics surrounding the glyph.
Draw guidelines
This will draw all local and global guidelines.
Draw graph values
This will draw the values on each point of the graph
and its scope (min and max values)
Available graphs
These offer a variety of metric-related information about your glyphs to be displayed in the graphs.
The Local and Global switches decide about the scope of each graph. Local scope:
The mininum and maximum of each graph will be the minimum and maximum of the single glyph on the page. Global scope:
The mininum and maximum of each graph will be the minimum and maximum of all glyphs in all fonts. Here you can compare metrics of a glyph relative to all other glyphs in the fonts.
The line thickness of the graphs will give you a visual feedback about the scope.
The thicker the line is, the smaller is the scope.
The thinner the line is, the greater is the scope.
You can think of this feature as a zoom. If you zoom into a graph, the scope decreases and the lines become thicker.
This also means that an inconsistency (a dent in the graph’s line) is more severe on a thin line (big scope = huge difference) than on a very thick line (tiny scope = small detail).
Trust me, it’s logical. You’ll get used to it.
Choose fonts
Font in Fontlab shows you a selection of non-Multiple-Master-fonts open in FontLab. Autopsy will try to pre-order them with their width (Condensed, Normal, Extended) and weight (Thin, Regular, Bold). If the order of the fonts is messed up, then check the FontInfo for each font and enter the correct width and weight values.
Transfer these fonts into the Use these fonts list to use them and change the order afterwards with the up and down buttons.
Open User Guide
Yours, truly.
The User Guide as a PDF.
Multiple Master Mode
This window is similar to the one above, with one difference: Choosing fonts.
When you’re working on a Multiple Master font, you will see a simple text field instead of the two lists.
In this text field you enter a list of instances you want to have used by Autopsy delimited by a comma. If your MM-font has more than one axis, you will have to enter a slash-delimited list of values for each instance. These values will be stored inside your VFB file in a location where you’ll never find them, so they will re-appear the next time you work on the font.
Unlike other instance generators you will never get to see the instances as windows in FontLab. They are only generated internally and are aborted before they get to see the light.
This will save you the usual step of generating instances of your font before checking them and makes is easier to tweak the (b=√(ac), a=b²÷c and c=b²÷c)-ness of your font.
Example 1:
Four instances of a font with one axis (weight):
You want: Thin, Regular, Bold, Black
You enter: 100, 400, 750, 1000
Example 2:
Six instances of a font with two axes (width and weight):
You want: Condensed Regular, Condensed Bold, Normal Regular, Normal Bold, Extended Regular, Extended Bold
You enter: 0/400, 0/750, 500/0, 500/750, 1000/0, 1000/750
Working with the PDFs
Search the PDF for glyphs
Each page in the PDF contains a headline with the glyph name, its index and unicode(s) if applicable. You can use these values with your PDF reader’s built-in search function to jump to a specific glyph.
Example 1: Search for the lower caps a. You enter: /a/.
They have a trailing slash aswell because searching just for /a will also find /aacute, /abreve and so on. It will also find /A. Sorry, that’s all I can do for you.
Example 2: Search for the glyph index 68 You enter: #68#.
Same goes for the trailing rhombe.
Example 2: Search for the unicode 0074 (lower case t in hexadecimal notation) You enter: u0074u.
You can skip the trailing 'u' in most cases because latin unicodes are all four-digit only.
Annotating PDFs
You are a foundry in need of discussing designs with your designers? Just use Adobe Acrobat to annotate PDFs and send them via email.
Tweaking
Changing fonts and colours of the PDF
If you’re a foundry and you want to use Autopsy as a means of communication with designers, you can change the background colour of the front page and headline as well as the fonts used in the PDF according to your corporate design.
There is a preferences file called Autopsy.plist in your FontLab Applications folder, that stores various user settings.
For Windows: C:\Programme\FontLab\Studio5\Macros\
For Mac: /Library/Application Support/FontLab/Studio5/Macros/
Open Autopsy.plist in your favourite text editor and add a section called appearance just after the first <dict> to it.
The colour is a list of CMYK values in float form (100% = 1 and 50% = 0.5). You can use integer
or real for 1 or 0, but you must use real for float values such as 0.5 or 0.333333. (They’ll switch accordingly after first use anyway).
You can use either PostScript PFB or TrueType fonts. That’s a limitation of ReportLab. Both Regular and Bold have to be specified. If you must use just one font instead of two, just enter the same values for both here.
For PostScript PFB fonts you have to enter the values:
• customfontRegularName
• customfontRegularAFM
• customfontRegularPFB
• customfontBoldName
• customfontBoldAFM
• customfontBoldPFB
• customfontfolder
Use the PostScript name of the fonts for the *-Name values. If unsure, check the AFM-file for the line starting with full name.
For TrueType fonts you have to enter the values:
• customfontRegularTTF
• customfontBoldTTF
• customfontfolder
Structure of plist-file: <?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”UTF-8”?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=”1.0”>
<dict> >> ENTER NEW CODE HERE <<
<key>presets</key>
<dict>
<key>__default__</key>
<dict>
.
.
.
</dict>
</dict>
<key>version</key>
<string>v1a</string>
</dict>
</plist>
New code to be insterted: <key>appearance</key>
<dict> <key>colour</key> <array>
<integer>0</integer>
<real>0.050000000000000003</real>
<integer>1</integer>
<integer>0</integer>
</array> <key>customfontBoldAFM</key>
<string>ItBdRo__.afm</string>
<key>customfontBoldName</key>
<string>InfoTextBold-Roman</string>
<key>customfontBoldPFB</key>
<string>ItBdRo__.pfb</string>
<key>customfontRegularAFM</key>
<string>ItBoRo__.afm</string>
<key>customfontRegularName</key>
<string>InfoTextBook-Roman</string>
<key>customfontRegularPFB</key>
<string>ItBoRo__.pfb</string>
<key>customfontfolder</key>
<string>/Library/Application Support/FontLab/Studio5/Macros/Autopsy/</string> </dict>
Troubleshooting
Known problems
from reportlab.pdfbase import pdfdoc
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable
After resetting FontLab’s macro system you may get an error message resulting from ReportLab, the PDF generation library.
Solution: Restart FontLab.
Hand over the cash
This was a lot of work. If you’re using Autopsy professionally, please don’t forget to buy a licence from my shop. Thank you.
Page orientation
Draw metrics
Draw guidelines 
Draw graph values 
Available graphs 
Choose fonts 
Open User Guide 
