Feature request: kerning gesture

#1

One of the things I do not enjoy in kerning is the fact that you need to press four keys to move by +10 or -10 units. I am trying to make my own physical device using rotary encoder (a dial with no minimum or maximum stop), also but think Glyphs could offer better and more finger-friendly commands in the Text tool:

  • Touch Bar slider (similar to volume or brightness control, except value-setting relative)
  • Shift + horizontal scroll
  • Shift + drag (maybe not a good idea since the mouse position doesn’t always stay at the letter position, depending on the text content)

And it will in/decrease the value in increment of 5 or 10, but not 1 (I just think that’s cleaner that way).

Does anyone like the idea?

#2

There are options:

Glyphs.defaults["GSKerningIncrementHigh"] = 20
Glyphs.defaults["GSKerningIncrementLow"] = 5

I am not sure the Touch Bar will be with us for much longer.

Kerning values can be set from the API. I would connect the controller via the API, not relay its inputs to the standard Glyphs shortcuts.

#3

Problem is the number of keys involved in the command you need to do a lot, not necessarily what it does. All you are doing is to increase and decrease a value, so it shouldn’t be this unintuitive.

And what about the Touch Bar? Is that your opinion or informed prediction? I for one love it much more than F keys. (preference aside, I know it’s not as universal as gestures like shift+scroll, which would be my pick)

#4

The Edit view already has lots of shortcuts, so it’s difficult to use less keys without conflicting with existing functionality. This could be solved by having a dedicated Kerning tool where simpler shortcuts would be usable.

I just have the control strip expanded at all time, but I like the physical keys on my external keyboard much better. The Touch Bar API never evolved, so Apple does not seem particularly dedicated.

#5

One can do all of that with something like Better Touch Tool. But often times what sounds good in theory causes some unexpected problems (precision?)

#6

Do you mean setKerningForPair()? For my rotary encoder project, I want my input to register fast, and I want to learn if there is a better alternative (including Objective-C).

Hmm, I even considered finally learning Objective-C after learning the existence of the API…

#7

Is setKerningForPair too slow for you?

#8

I think it’s fine now, it’s just I wanted if there was something better. Also setKerningForPair is called from GSFont and I cannot undo it (I tried setting a undo group it from a glyph, but it doesn’t register).

#9

There are methods on the layer:

value = layer.previousKerningForLayer_direction_(previousLayer, direction)
layer.setPreviousKerning_forLayer_direction_(value, previousLayer, direction)

value = layer.nextKerningForLayer_direction_(nextLayer, direction)
layer.setNextKerning_forLayer_direction_(value, nextLayer, direction)

direction = LTR|RTL
Those will trigger undo.

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