Keeping metrics consistent throughout masters

Right now I’m designing the light master for a font, and I’m wondering if there’s an easy way to copy the metrics from the regular weight to the light weight (and, in the future, to the bold weight) so that I have a starting point for spacing and kerning rather than having to start from scratch. Is this possible?

By holding down the Option key, you’ll get a Paste Special option in the Edit menu. From there you can easily copy and paste sidebearings and/or widths. Will that work going from one master to another?

I tried this and it partly worked ― it pasted the kerning groups, but not the LSB and RSB (I had those boxes checked). Am I doing anything wrong?

Copy metrics of selected glyphs from one master to another cannot be done with Paste special !
It serves in the same Master only !
Is there an available script to do it?

There is a Steal Sidebearings script in my repo.

I’ve tested the script;

  1. It cannot be run over selected glyphs only.
  2. it might be risky; particularly glyphs that are totally built with components lost their coordinates and result a mess.

@GeorgSeifert enhancing the Paste Special command should resolve that!

Please add a feature request on GitHub. I cannot fix right away because my Mac died and is still at the Apple Store.

One more attempt … I’ve tried working around it by saving the file under a different name;
while copying the specific master metrics from the other file and

into the other Master in the Original file; but it did not succeed …
Then I’ve switched the Masters in the cloned file; Copy > Paste Special into the Original File … it succeeded !
The approach with Paste Special is different from FontLab as it seems it remembers the Master name!

I changed that Paste Special will paste into the current master instead of the original master.

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