Contextual alternates cycling

Glyphs
1

Hello!

I have 2 questions about contextual alternates cycling (I have 2 alternates per each letter and number).

1. I’ve followed tutorials on the site and it worked wonders until I noticed that when I make a bullet list it starts the cycle from the beginning every time I hit [enter]. Please look at the image below:
list
I’ve included LF CR bullets and other punctuation to the ETC class. I wonder why it can’t keep the cycle? What am I missing?

2. I’ve noticed that for words like ‘picnic’ it’ll write like ‘p’ ‘i.ss01’ ‘c.ss02’ ‘n’ ‘i.ss01’ ‘c.ss02’
Is there a way to randomize a cycle like this even more? I don’t know how to explain this idea… Maybe you’ll understand me if I’ll write it like this:
For example to write a code that will replace B with B.ss01 when it’s repeated between 2 random letters. Like a cycle within the cycle? x ay x x ay x x x ay x → x ay x x a(y+1) x x x ay x
If it’s not possible to do please tell me as well!

Thank you!
:sparkles::pray::sparkles:

2

  1. no. Same lines will look the same. Theoretically the rand feature ought to give you true randomization, but to my knowledge, it is not implemented anywhere. You could cycle from back to front, but then you’d have the same problem with lines ending in the same words.

  2. It is all about how you arrange your cycles. If you put p and n in different cycles, it should work.

3

  1. omg Cycling it back to front sounds like a very good idea. Will try it tomorrow and report the result :nerd_face: Thank you so much!

  2. I actually have divided letters in 3 classes so P, C happen to be in the same one and N in another one. When I change them around nothing changes… maybe I do not understand correctly what you mean, do I?

4
  1. Take a look at the Effects scripts in my repo.
  2. Did you include space in your cycles?
5

Yes, I do have space in my cycles.
etc

This is so weird but it looks like I’ve solved the 2nd question by trying to solve the 1st one. I wrote this:
sub @ALT2 @ALT2’ by @ALT1;
sub @ALT1 @ALT2’ by @DEFAULT;
and now all words like ‘picnic’ or numbers like ‘127127’ are perfectly randomized. :face_with_monocle: I’m so happy about it! Don’t know what to do now because I’d like to have it like this but also get different letter from the new line. Any suggestions? If it’s not possible to do I think it’ll be fine.

Thank you so much for your help! :tulip:

6

Ulrike Rausch gave a talk at Typo Labs 2018 that provided both ideas and a reality check:

7

Thank you so much!!! :sparkling_heart: Such a helpful playlist!