High point count glyphs. In Glyphs

Hi there,

I’ve been an avid Glyphs user for some time now, stepping over from Fontlab, a bit over a year back. Currently I’m working (experimenting for a proof of concept at least) on a revival of an ornamental wood-type, which is extremely detailed. Halfway through the test-glyph, Glyphs begins chugging so progress is hampered, and this isn’t the /W… I’ve made other ornamental types before, but these were all exports from my Fontlab data, which handled large amounts of points pretty decent.

The anchor count currently hovers around 2.1k, which in the end (I fear) will make a base glyph have a count of around 4k. This is pretty hefty, but most professional programs seem to handle fonts of that count perfectly fine. Each anchor has been optimally hand-drawn, and since it’s a display face, I’d rather not use optical simplifications (such as straight paths on the smaller details)

I’ve read up on what is advised on the forum, but do I have any other options? Is there a way to beef up the memory allocation to Glyphs. Or should go back to Fontlab, draw the paths there and bring them back to Glyphs for the final touches? This would be a shame because I enjoy the Glyphs drawing system, I even do my uncoloured illustrative work in it!

I did use glyphs with those node count. Could you send me the file that I can have a look? And a screencast on what you are doing?

I’ll send you the file, mind I mentioned anchors, so it will be twice the nodes. For now the file is still workable, but being halfway, I have my concerns (and this is a relative easy glyph compared to, for instance the /M and /W. Of course finding the limits was also the intention of starting with a single glyph.

Thanks for the file. I tweaked it a bit. That improved the performances on my machine by around 80%. So you should be able to double the nodes and still be able to work.

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Thank you! Were those node tweaks? (resulting in a lower count?) Since then I’ll probably have to change my drawing approach.

No, I improved the preformance of the node drawing in Glyphs. You will see it in the next update for 2.5 cutting edge.

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More than I could ever ask, and thank you for the swift response!

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