As a variation of “Show all glyphs that use this glyph as component”, I’d usually prefer to show only those glyphs in which a particular anchor is used for the positioning of components.
For example, while I am setting the position of the top anchor of the E, I need to see all E’s with an accent on top but I am not interested in showing Eogonek or Edotbelow.
Similarly, it would be helpful to be able to distinguish “used” and “unused” anchors, i.e. those that are currently not used for the positioning of any component in the font. I know they may be exported and then used by the text shaping engine but it would be helpful to have a little indicator as to whether an anchor needs to (rather, can) be proofed in Glyphs. Maybe just a different colour?
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That is tricky. The information about what anchors are actually be used and where is only available in the middle of the automatic alignment process. Querying that when drawing anchors is way too expensive. It would need quite a bit of work to make that information available.
It would need to be cached, I suppose. Are you referring to the idea of colouring unused anchors differently? What about the original request, “Show all composites that use this anchor”? Probably it would not be a performance issue. I wouldn’t even mind to wait a few seconds until the glyphs show up.
Yes, I meat the coloring. The collection is just complicated. The alignment algorithm is not supposed to tell what anchors were used …
In any case, it would be very handy to have such information. After all, as a designer, I need to proof whatever I design. While I am setting the position of a certain anchor, I want to proof exactly (i.e. completely and exclusively) the impact this will have on the final font.