Narrow accent use

Glyphs
1

Regarding use of .narrow accents, I’m having a problem. I made an ogonek.narrow accent and wish to use it with my lowercase dotlessi.

I edited the GlyphData.xml file to change the regular-width ogonek in both the accents and anchors sections to ogonek.narrow and ogonek_narrow respectively, but only the original regular-width ogonek shows up in the accent cloud. The narrow version does not show in the cloud even when the anchor is selected. My edited entry is the only data entry in the modified file.

The regular-width ogonek shows in the base character in the accent cloud, but in the composite cell the narrow version appears as it should. The only problem I’m having is alignment of the narrow ogonek but that’s easy enough to overcome.

I think what is happening is that the User GlyphData.xml file does not take precedence over the App version, but merely is intended to add to it. Is that correct?

As I said, this isn’t a major problem for me but I would like to understand more about how Glyphs works.

2

How did you edit the GlyphData file?

4

This is correct but due to the internal implementation this only works if you add an entry for the “ogonek.narrow” to the glyphData file like this:

You should be able to use an regular ogonek anchor in the dotlessi.

I will change the preview code that it picks up the .narrow variants automatically so that the changes to the glyph data is not needed.

5

OK, thanks. So to finish this up:

  1. Does .alt also work with accent glyphs?

  2. I would still like to know if the User xml data file takes precedence, or just acts as a supplementary list.

6

It takes precedence and supplements.

7

Thanks Rainer, that’s even better than I thought.

Now, about that .alt question…

8

Not really what you mean. What do you want to do precisely?

9

Georg said the .narrow problem I am having has to do with internal implementation, i.e. .narrow support. Although I haven’t tried to use it, since .alt seems to work in the basic alphabet, my question is: will Glyphs recognize, and honor, an accent named with a .alt extension?

Someone might want to have an alternate accent without having to name it .case or .narrow.

10

Ha ha, I still do not know what you mean by recognize and honor. Sorry, I have worked on kerning all day long. :slight_smile: But, yes, you can have accents with a .alt or any other dot extension and they work. You can e.g. bring up Font > Generate Glyphs with a recipe like x+dieresis.alt=xdieresis
Is that what you mean?

11

Yes indeed; that’s the answer I need.

By “recognize, and honor” I was questioning whether Glyphs would consider .alt a valid accent glyph.

12

The problem with the implementation was only with the cloud preview. You can create actual glyphs from any component with any any suffix. You can check if Glyphs recognizes the name by switching to the list view and check the category column. If it reads “Mark” than everything is fine.

13

Would it be easy for you to implement .alt to work with Cloud Preview? If so, I think it would be useful to have it included.

14

Sorry a little bit off topic. What width do you suggest for narrow marks? The regular accents are all normalized to 600 upm, narrow accents should normalized too? What is your suggestion.
Best regards.

15

The width of the accent glyphs does not matter at all. I usually give them 20 units side-bearings.

16

Thanks Georg.
At the export, if I’m going to use combining accents, this narrow accents should be zero width at exporting like combining ones?

17

glyphs marked as Nonspacing are automatically set to zero width on export.