Activate Preview Panel with a Dual-Monitor Setup

Is this possible at the moment? If so, what would be the steps to set it up.

As a side-note. I would love to be able to *undock tabs and menus.

*If you check C4D you can get a pretty good idea of this functionality. Other than that I found FLS floating tabs quite useful.

Window > Preview Panel

Not really working on my end. It displays a blank output thus my question. Are there any steps?

Since a couple of weeks I also was testing the Preview Panel on a 2nd monitor… Until I saw this post I thought the problem is on my side. Mainly, the following issues:

  1. Slow refreshing of the PP compared to changes on the parallel monitor.
  2. No accurate synching … A sliding problem where glyphs stick to the left or Right and hidden glyphs cannot be be moved in by a slider button or manually dragging the surface.
  3. Resizing the PP does not automatically rearrange glyphs in the panel… While using the Zoom tool does not provide the expected results.
    [i’m out of the office until end of this week, I can post screen cast/ shots by my return if you need]

I would love to be able to *undock tabs and menus.

Not going to happen unless you give us a very convincing reason why we need to break the one-window-one-document principle and make the app much more difficult and confusing to use. Once you have more than two or three fonts open, splitting the editing of a font across multiple windows is maddening.

If you check C4D

The needs of a 3D app are very different because in order to work precise, the mouse is set to go very slow, hence the need for a detachable menu system. This particular situation does not apply to type design.

Other than that I found FLS floating tabs quite useful.

I for one didn’t find the floating tabs useful because it clutters the UI and makes support more difficult. It sounds good in theory but there is no gain in functionality and a lot of time of many other people wasted.

Since it is detached from a document, it needs to know which document it should display a preview for. So you need to start working in a document, and it will update once you do something. Usually a click or activating a node suffices.

There is one problem with some outdated .glyphsReporter plugins. Make sure you have the latest versions of your plugins, or deactivate them in the View menu.

Some of these problems should be fixed in the latest betas. Do you have cutting edge activated in the update preferences?

Cool, guys. It works now. Thanks for chiming in.

Been noticing this and some other threads in the last few days in which people seem to want to clutter up and complicate the UI of Glyphs for the sake of not having to learn some new habits. The beauty of Glyphs is that it is so uncluttered and elegant. I appreciate Georg and Erich’s efforts to keep it that way. I am relatively new to it and find it very refreshing to work in, in spite of having to learn a few new habits. If you want a font editor that looks like the cockpit of a 747, well, there’s lots of those to chose from already.

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Amen! Ya’ll need to listen to Brother Mark. He speaks the Lord’s truth.

Georg & Erich efforts on Glyphs already proved a success. This is undeniable, the reasons for this on the other hand are far less obvious and due to many factors other than UI/UX. Probably the best advantage Glyphs has over FLS is the kaizen/agile approach to design opposed to the waterfall method. And if we oversimplify we can call this customer service and customer satisfaction, and the guys here go miles to make those things happen. Of course, they are learning on the fly, but the system allows iterations, so that helps.

I also thought that 747s have a rather intimidating interface. Surely it is not simple and it is not a good solution for a small program, which goal is to make designing letters easier, quicker and accessible. However, along the way let’s not forget that there is also a middle ground that is usually neglected due to many reasons like curse of knowledge, self-echancement bias, backlash effect, etc.

One thing is certain, the more companies listen to their customers the better product they will provide. In a sense, the bigger the heart the bigger the reward.

To me, listening to customers (too much) sounds like another way to fail. Isn’t that how apps like Photoshop, FontLab, and many Microsoft products ended up as huge mess?

Well, the concrete feature and UI suggestions we receive are not always so great.

That is why we ask, ‘What are you trying to achieve?’ The problem behind the feature request is sometimes better solved with a script, a plugin, or a different workflow.

I had Mark in mind when I have written this response. Listening to customers is never a bad thing, but this has to be an active listening and not just executing on suggestions. Even better way is to propose what is missing and what the customers don’t even know they need. A funny phrase in this regards is Ford’s famous “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

In this sense people needed a faster horse, but they didn’t expect it to be made of steel.

@Tosche - All these companies are trying to innovate instead of innovating. It is one of the perils of getting bigger and slower.

@Erich - Agreed. It is a good approach.

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