AutomaticAlignment vs. Alignment

1

The Docu says_

*automaticAlignment*
Defines whether the component is automatically aligned.
    Type:	bool

*alignment*
New in version 2.5.
    TODO

What’s the difference between those? Please for API and coding, as well as UI considerations.
I am working on a plugin for displaying those and related statuses, but I am confused by those slightly different properties. In the UI you can only Enable/Disable “Automatic Alignment”. But by enabling and disabling some components in a test setup, as well as reading those 2 properties, I can’t get my head around which is doing what.

B)
It also appears that automaticAlignment returns True or False, while alignment can return 0, 1 and -1. What does that mean?

C)
Also it appears that if I start with one component, and set Automatic Alignment in the UI for it, and copy/paste it, it will have the same state for automaticAlignment (as expected). However if I disable and re-enable that second component’s Alignment in the UI, I can never get the Automatic Alignment state back, only the alignment. Urgh, this is so confusing.

here’s my Skedge snippet that you can try with for example 2 “acutecomb” instances in another random glyph:

from AppKit import NSColor

alignmentColors = {
	-1 : NSColor.redColor(),
	0  : NSColor.yellowColor(),
	1  : NSColor.greenColor(),
}

for c in Glyphs.font.selectedLayers[0].components:
	try:
		alignmentColors[c.alignment].setFill()
		c.bezierPath.fill()
	except:
		pass
	if c.automaticAlignment:
		NSColor.greenColor().setStroke()
		c.bezierPath.stroke()
2

Alignment is more fine grained. It stores the setting by the user. It can have the following values

GSAlignmentDisable = -1
GSAlignmentDefault = 0
GSAlignmentForce = 1

What you are looking for is isAligned(). That is set by the alignment code with those values:

GSAlignmentNoAligned = -2,
GSAlignmentAligned = 2,
GSAlignmentHorizontal = 3,
4

according to the documentation ìsAligned` belongs to the GSLayer, not the component. Why is that? I can call component.isAligned() and get “2”.

5

Both layer and component have it. But it is not documented and wrapped for the componet (that’s why you need the parenthesis).

6

And which one is the one that the user sets in the UI: Context Menu > Enable/Disable Automatic alignment?

Now after you added .isAligned() here, we got even 3 different alignments on a component, and in my initial question I was already confused by the 2 different alignments.

Main reason why I ask:
My Plugin is supposed to show broken alignments, that happen when you generate an instance as a .glyphs file and add this as a new master to the font. (Which I hereby might consider a BTW-bug-report :wink: )
– while “breaks” means just, that the components don’t have the same alignment state as in the other masters.

7

The user set the .alignment but that doesn’t necessarily tell you if the componet is aligned or not.

8

What do you expect when two master have different alignment settings. I can’t interpolate them. So I think it picks the first it finds.

9

No, it was the same in the 2 extreme masters and just different in the one in the middle

10

Thank you, this is one information I was after.

And this adds to the confusion :smiley:
So how can I tell?
I want to get the proper information, in order to visualize it properly, in order to have the user have a consistent setup through all masters (which can easily happen to not be, and it’s hard to spot single components that are for example not aligned in one master).

I try a little more later with a clean mind and let you know about potential continued struggles :slightly_smiling_face:

11

The set value in .alignment might not be in effect as because of a number of reasons. Some base glyphs are not aligned by default (so it needs a GSAlignmentForce, a previous component is not aligned…

12

I see, thank you so much! :slightly_smiling_face: