I was wondering if there was a feature, and if not if a feature was possible, to define and “favorite” selections of sorts, for quick and easy editing. I’m adding a picture …
(Clearly this is a test-glyph so never mind it not sitting on the baseline etc.) It would be nice if I could save the current selection, so I can just make one click next time I want to move this inner section of the glyph. I could merge it, double click the inner graph and achieve something like this, but then I have to disassemble the glyph when it’s MM time, so it doesn’t seem ideal.
It sounds very difficult to keep track of this. What do you want it to happen when the node structure changes in the favourite? e.g. if you add a node on the bottom-left segment, how do you want it to behave?
Besides, how many times do you actually need to revisit the exact same selection?
This quick select thingy saves the selection of objects, not parts of them (and that’s much easier to implement). In Glyphs, that’d be equivalent of favouriting a whole path. Unlike in 3D apps where you have tons of objects, this particular implementation does not make much sense here.
Hi Tosche, in 3D modeling you can save objects, vertex, edges, faces (polygon based) isoparms (NURBS based). But I agree with you that this feature, as it is use in 3D modeling, is not worth in typeface design, in where you almost never are going to have more than a hundreds of nodes in a glyphs.
What I think could be helpful is to have nested smart components, in other words, after been set a smart component, create another smart component made only of smart components and define new axis based in the modifications of the smart component that compound that top smart component. That is a common practice in CJK type production.
You can save polygon selections? What happens if the content changes (which happens all the time I assume)? The problem with selection saving in Glyphs is that, when a node is added to a curve segment whose off-curve nodes are also saved (or not), I cannot give an automatic answer to which off-curve should be added/removed to the save. This sounds too contextual.
And unless there are so many shapes or you need to revisit the same selection so many times, I do not think this feature is justifiable. I’m kinda repeating you and myself though.
Mh, I can see you feel very strongly that this doesn’t make sense. Certainly it’s not a deal breaker not to have, but I think it WOULD be a nice feature. Just something that would make life a little easier. And I get that everyone works different anyway.
If you add a node, then the favorite selection would simply break or go away, and you make a new favorite. Im a perfect world, you could maybe link selections, like the counter in the d p q b etc…
I don’t know how you work, but I DO do this kind of adjusting quite frequently. Draw some shapes, set some words, reconsider curves, then the weight changes and feels unnatural, and I need to adjust. And the only reason I brought it up is because I find myself making the same selection (around all sorts of other nodes) over and over and over …
As a programmer, this redundancy screams for a programmatic solution. Maybe I could figure out to write a script myself (map it to a key or something), but I don’t have the time to get into glyphs programming right now (I really should’t even be designing type, but you gotta have something to unwind, you know)
If you need to repeat the same change elsewhere (such as in b d p q) then I think you should be using components.
I do change outlines a lot, but rarely work on the exact same selection, let alone frequently enough to justify this new feature.
I am usually skeptical about these kind of features. This will require a new entry to the .glyphs file, new UI, new things to bug-check. Everyone says their idea is “nice to have” and I agree that it would improve a few cases; everything is nice to have. But incorporating all of them will end up with a disastrous mess, aka FontLab Studio 5.
Having said that, rather than saving selections, I think it’s better to invest on improving selection speed, like introducing lasso selection. I also think selection saving could be a script solution as you say. I personally don’t want to deal with structural changes in selection though.
I think that what you wan to do is to modify segments. It is so, there are other ways to consider that task. One way to consider, that could be more useful in Glyphs, is to link some nodes to a kind of modifier or constraint. Some like the following video.
