Feature request for preview instance

1

This could be useful to add an option to “Show only Active Instances” next to “Show All Instances” in the preview bar. When we work with a ton of instances it’s a bit of a mess.
This option could help to focus on specific instances.

6 Likes
2

Interesting idea. Thank you for the input!

3

I’ve wanted this for years but I kept forgetting to ask!

1 Like
4

Hey, any update on this feature?

5

This is already implemented. Click the eye symbol in the instance popup to select what instance you like to see.

6

I see, I thought there will be one click option to show&hide inactive instances. Thanks

7

In Glyphs 2 the active state for the instance was used in the preview panel. That was annoying as you needed to change that all the time.

8

I agree with you Georg, that’s why I had proposed to add an additional option just below “Show all Instances” to preview only instances with active state.

9

I don’t think that I’ll add that command.
You could write a very short script that syncs the active and visible state of the instances.

10

I’m trying to write this short script, but I don’t know how to indicate multiple instances for font.currentTab.previewInstances

How ‘all’ and ‘live’ work ?
It’s not possible to have a ‘active’ to show only active instances?

font = Glyphs.font

for instance in font.instances:
	if instance.active:
		font.currentTab.previewInstances = instance
11

This script shows only active instances:

for instance in Font.instances:
	instance.visible = instance.active
12

For me, nothing happens with your script @FlorianPircher

I see if I active an Instance in Export Panel, it return me True when I use print (instance.visible)

13

It works for me:

14

Oh I know why, I didn’t notice that I have to be in “Show all Instances” to see them.
For a mysterious reason, all instances was Hide “Show all Instances”.
Thanks @FlorianPircher

15

A suggestion: say you have over 100 instances. How can you preview just 10 of them? That’s a more frequent need than seeing “all or one”. In Glyphs 2, you just select a bunch and activate; in Glyphs 3, go click 90 ‘eye’ icons.

Maybe you could allow selecting multiple eye icons or perhaps add the checkbox in the info/exports window? Seems to be more reasonable than if someone would build a separate tool for such a trivial thing. Thanks!

16

You can use this code to only show active instances in Preview Panel.

Font = Glyphs.font

for instance in Font.instances:
	instance.visible = instance.active
1 Like
17

Sure, but that workflow destroys the whole point of separating Active from Visible

18

I’ll think about this. Until then, you need two write a script like this:

Font = Glyphs.font

activeBlock 2 # change this to select a block of 10 instances (in this case number 20–29). 

idx = 0
for instance in Font.instances:
	instance.visible = activeBlock == idx // 10
	idx += 1
2 Likes