Custom GlyphData fallback behaviour - Unicode hallucination

Glyphs
1

Hi all,

I am using a custom GlyphData.xml file that is deployed to /Library/Application Support/Glyphs 3/Info, as a replacement for GlyphsApp’s own internal data. I’m experiencing some odd behaviour though, and curious about the fallback behaviour of Glyphs re: accessing custom data.

Note that I’m using an older version of Glyphs (3.4.1, build 3436) - updating that to the latest 3.5.1 is not viable at the current time unless it would be the only solution (reading the release notes do not lead me to believe this is a known fixed bug from 3436).

An example of the issue I’m facing is as below:

I have three folders. Each has a new .glyphs file:

A
    - New glyphs file
    - GlyphData.xml: extracted from GlyphsApp.app

B
    - New glyphs file
    - GlyphData.xml: My custom data, as deployed to path mentioned before 

C
    - New glyphs file
    - No GlyphData (so should fall back to deployed [as far as I understand])

My custom GlyphData prefers ‘yeh-farsi’ over ‘yehFarsi-ar’. If I add the glyph within A and hit Update Glyph Info, it is correctly renamed to Glyphs’ preferred naming and nothing else changes. If I do the same within B, it happily accepts my naming and nothing else changes.

However, if I do the same within C, the glyph rightly accepts my name, but is picking up the presentation form codepoint as well from somewhere.

I’m curious where this may be being picked up from, and any pointers where to look. Thanks in advance.

2

  1. Please don’t just copy the full file from within Glyphs. Only have the entries in the file that you really like to change. The custom file is not replacing the build in file, but it is merged in. And that takes some time to load and might be confusing things.

  2. in “C”. What do you mean by “No GlyphData”?

1 Like
3

Thanks Georg, replying somewhat backwards:

2 - In “C”, I mean i have not GlyphData.xml file in that directory (next to the .glyphs file), so I would expect the one in ‘/Library/Application Support/Glyphs 3/Info’ to be taking the lead.

1 - I have a significant number of projects with consistent naming behaviour that differs from Glyphs’ names, and I use those within other parts of my production workflow outside of Glyphs. As such, there are a substantial amount of things that fit into the ‘really like to change’. I understand that maintaining a complete file may be causing confusion though, and I’ll try subsetting that down to see if it resolves things.

To that end, it would be helpful to understand a bit the logic of how Glyphs is merging data in, so that I can potentially restructure how I’m using those files in a way that anticipates how they are being collated. It may also help me understand why the same GlyphData.xml file is giving different results depending on whether it is being read from next to the glyphs source, or from /Library/Application Support/Glyphs 3/Info.

4

Does the fallback pick the presentation form codepoint because it is the first match it finds in the stock data? I am curious how that order is decided when a glyph name has more than one Unicode value.