Color Flow is a Palette Plugin to help organize and gamify your workflow by tracking progress through visual feedback. It works by assigning meaning to Layer Color Labels which are sorted into a series of customizable catogories and made directly accessable through the sidebar. Checkboxes and color-coded progress bars help to easily identify and update which step you are on in a workflow.
Show Master Dashboard is a Reporter Plugin to display a Progress Bar showing Layer Colors of Selected Master. Toggle it from View > Show Master Dashboard
I donât think to add an option to use Glyph Color instead of Layer Color.
The main raison of why I decided to make Color Flow, was that many Glyphs users (in my opinion) do not use the layerColor and use badly Glyph Colors.
I think, the use of Glyph Color should be reserved to mark specific Glyphs during font development. For example, I set all small caps/small numbers in Magenta, to know that they are glyphs that I should do at the end of the development phase.
I decide to make this plugin to encourage users to use Layer Color instead of Glyph Color.
BTW, If you have a file with only GlyphColor set, you can use my script âCopy GlyphColor to None LayerColorâ, to copy GlyphColor to LayerColor.
I donât think that such a limitation is useful. People use colors in different way and I donât see a point on limiting that. And it is not a big change. Check the layer color first, if there is none, check the glyph color and use it if set.
I think the best solution is to add a toggle button to switch Color Flow mode from Layer to Glyph detection. Color Flow Glyph, will be less complex because it will not need to automatically set color.
Maybe it also needed to add possibility to assign different meaning for Glyph and Layer Color.
For example :
The problem with this, is what happen if someone use both ?
I will take my personal use of Color Labels as example.
Iâm used to use Magenta Glyph Color to mark all glyphs that are âgenerativeâ (small caps/small numbers, full component glyph). This means that when I start a new project, I set Glyph Color of all these glyph to Magenta.
If Color Flow check automatically Glyph Color when no Layer Color are set, that mean in this situation Color Flow will think that Magenta work step is checked, when this is not the case.
That looks like an interesting tool! Just wanted to ask, since the process is not always linear, @HugoJ, Iâm curious to see how you organize your own ColorNames.txt, if thatâs not secret
red=First Draft
orange=Outline Cleaned
purple=Anchors Set
lightBlue=Metrics Set
darkGreen=Kerning Group Set
lightGreen=Ready
yellow=
brown=
darkBlue=
magenta=
lightGray=
charcoal=
I am getting constant crashes with the plugin when opening files, for numerous reasons:
When changing a masterâs name in a file, the keys in the dictionary stored in the fontâs user data become invalid. They should be updated. Use the master ID instead of the name.
When opening new files while a file with the color palette dictionary is already open: the change of files is not recognised correctly by the plugin, if I see this correctly.
Thank you, that makes sense!
What I meant is that as I understand this tool implies that each next step includes all the previous ones, thus âlinearâ. The process however can sometimes include some going back and forth between different stages and Iâm thinking how to indicate that with just one color. Say I already have my anchors or kerning groups set, but realize that drawing may need some improvements, or something like that. Maybe having multiple colors would also be helpful (although thatâs of course some extra UI instead of layer/glyph colors, and probably not the way you mean it)
Anyhows, thatâs just some thoughts I had from thinking about how I could implement this certainly useful tool!
You are right. UI need an action to be updated, I will find a solution to fix it.
If you realize that drawing need some improvements, you can toggle step associated with it and Layer Color will automatically be updated. (if this step is before Anchors and Kerning check steps)
If it were possible to display/assign several colors, it would be easier, but it is not possible.
So the best method to achieve this for the moment is the use LayerColor feature.
Color Flow Report is a way to track Layer Color changes during a work session.
Now in the Action Button, you will find an option to Enable/Disable Color Flow Report.
When enabled, it creates .txt file in a âColor Flow Reportsâ folder, next to your .glyph file.
This .txt file track all Layer Color changes during your work session. (a work session start when you open your file, and finish when you close it).
So when you will close your file, a .txt file like this New Font â 06272022-114914.txt will be generated, and will look like :
Oh, @FlorianPircher speaking of tags and colors in one thread: have you ever thought about adding colors to Guten Tag? I donât know about the implementation yet, just brainstorming. Maybe a textfile next to the glyphs file with tag name and color (name/value)? Or maybe that could even be implemented in the Tag object in Glyphs, in case many users would take up on the idea of colored tags.
Lastly, the Guten Tag could display a little dot or something for each tag of the current layer in the edit view.
Just an idea, I usually work more with tags than colors for this kind of process organization, but colored tags would be a divine touch.
Tag colors have come up already, but there are many different ways to approach this, so I have started a discussion thread on the Guten Tag repository:
Feel free to chime in with any ideas; no need to answer every question.
