Add extremes and nodes

And another question: I rework some glyphs and correct some paths. When I ‘Ad Extremes’ some nodes occure, I don’t understand (pict 1): They are so close to the others. It seems to me the nodes I placed by hand are more logical (pict 2). What’s right?
Thank you.


Number 1 is my choice. Adding extra nodes on a curve only makes it harder to achieve a smooth, more natural curve.

Extrem points are points where the curve is exactly vertical or horizontal.

At that subtle angle, I think you don’t need the bottom extremes at all.

Picture #1 for me, definitely. Of course, I understand you want to avoid short curve segments. You can either do this by leaving off the extremes entirely if the curve still looks correct to you (what Alex suggested) or clicking “open corner” on the end of the curve for a bit of extra space.

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Thanks for the commentary …
So, if the ‘extreme curves’ are not necessairy, I can avoid them in this cace. On pict # 2, I ad the extra nodes afterwards, so they don’t affect the curve. I thought it may be safer.

Extremes are technically needed for hinting, but in this case it seems like those blue nodes connecting to the stem will do it just fine, since the curve going slightly lower won’t make a difference in small sizes anyway.

Another reason to use extremes is they are easier to control (fewer degrees of freedom) and much much easier to interpolate (see kinks).

I would say neither. Keep nodes at extremes where possible, but avoid short segments. So start with the situation in pic 1 and remove the two nodes one by one.

If possible try to avoid constructions like in pic 2. You will run into kink situations and other difficulties in interpolation.

Oke. As I understand, first place the extremes but avoid the short segments. In the P of pict # 1 no extra nodes are needed.

Thanx!

I’m hijacking this thread since I didn’t want to make an extra post about this, but can we change the “Add Extremes” to “Add Extremes for selected segments”?

The function itself is quite handy but in cases like this it actually creates more work because you have to manually delete all those Extremes that create short segments.
From this menu entry I would expect to add extremes everywhere, but if I have a segment selected it only adds an extreme to that segment. If there is no need for an extreme, it does nothing, would that make sense?

There are some scripts doing that, search for ‘extremes’ here: Glyphs Scripts Index

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I think this is the new behaviour in 3.2, I might be mistaken though.

Otherwise, you can use the Italic Extremes plugin and set the italic angle to 0°.

Yes. In 3.2 it will add extremes only if one of the nodes of the segment is selected.

Shift-click the segment with the Draw tool (P).

Selecting the full segment will also add extreme in the adjacent segments. So you might want to select the off curve nodes only.

@mekkablue thanks, I didn’t know that!
@GeorgSeifert ah, that’s great news :slight_smile:
I haven’t really had the time and resources to test the alpha so far