I found the brilliant article on how to convert the unicode names to proper names and it works great, however, I worked out hot to copy a bunch of unicode names into text edit and convert to proper names, but how do I copy the proper names back into the font?
What exactly are you trying to do? And what article do you reference to?
I have a hebrew font and rather than using the actual names, it uses unicode values to the letter Alef is uni05D0. I would like to rename everything. I was able to copy out the values into a text file and use system services to convert the names. I could see how to use that to fix all the programming etc., but how do I import that data (or copy it) onto the actual glyphs themselves?
Can you not just uncheck Font info > Other > Use custom names, then select the glyphs you want to update and do Glyph > Update glyph info?
that doesn’t change the name to the correct name
I thought there might be a script to do it. Honestly, I can do it manually – will take half an hour, but thought there might be a faster way .
It should do, unless you have a custom GlyphsData.xml file loaded?
no, I am using the system convertor outlined in my original question
Then I really don’t understand what it is you’re trying to do. The system service converter works on selected text, not your Glyphs file, so that assumes you have all the (wrong) glyph names copied as plain text and are working in a text editor rather than directly in Glyphs.
But why do you need to copy the glyph names first? Is the purpose not to update the glyph names in the Glyphs file?
I’m not sure what you mean by “all the programming etc.” either – do you mean existing feature code and such things that already references the Unicode names? If so, you should be able to just disable Use custom names, save the Glyphs file, close it, and then reopen it. Glyphs should (and in my experience does) then convert all the Unicode names to nice names, including in feature code.
firstly, I am working in the glyphs file, not in plain text.
yes, I talking about mark positioning etc.
so you are saying that if I deselect the use custom names, then all the names will automatically convert to nice names including all the coding that has been done already?
yes it does convert to nice names, but not in the feature code from what I can see. I am double checking.
If you use Update glyph info while the file is still open, it only updates the names in the glyphs themselves. But if you disable Use custom names without updating the glyph info, then save and close the file, it should update both the glyph names and the corresponding feature code when you reopen it.
I’m not sure if it also catches additional code in custom parameters, but it should fix the ‘regular’ feature code.
I will check. Thank you!
update: unfortunately, it doesn’t work 
The glyph names can be updated by “Glyph > Update Glyph Info” (uncheck the “Use Custom Naming” in Font Info > Other. Then select all glyphs in Font View). The feature code can be updated with the system services. Select the Feature code and run the system service “Make nice glyph names v3”. Sometimes you need to copy the code to another app because the system doesn’t let the same app run the service and apply it).
yeah, I tried to do that, but it messed up everything up unfortunately because not everything was done 100% correctly. So for example the letter he-hb wasn’t defined as unicode but rather as just heh (with no unicode character) so when I tried to convert the code, it messed things up big time!
Thought there might be a shortcut, but I have inherited this file and it’s a mess
If you have more than one file with that naming scheme, if might be useful to set up a custom GlyphData file there you add your old names to the “alt name” field. That allows glyphs to pick them up in the renaming process. Otherwise do a manual search and replace in the .glyphs file.