Hi,
Would it be possible to include pen widths or strokes for type styles like calligraphic, broad nib,
medium, fine nib within Glyphs software?.
Regards
What do you mean? You can write a plugin that does that, or use one that is already there, like BroadNibber. I don’t think it should be delivered with the app.
But generally, real calligraphic pen strokes are more complicated than an automation can handle.
This would be cool. I don’t see it as bad for the core functionality. Only problem is that it needs to be done properly.
You can expand paths already as part of the core functionality. And there already are plugins that simulate broad nibs.
ill have a look at BroadNibber but can that expand a single line width to create a stroke in broad nib, medium, fine nib styles if possible.
Regards
Please, see for yourself:
I would love to see stroke functionality go beyond plugins and filters that can apply a stroke to path and have stroke functionality more like Illustrator. I know I can do prototyping or lettering with strokes in AI, that’s a pain in the ass because Illustrator is a bloated mess with terrible bezier tools. I’m not talking about making Glyphs into a full-blown vector drawing app, just giving it tools for strokes with pen angles and terminal shapes. I realize that this is too much to ask for Glyphs 2, but it’s the kind of thing that would make Glyphs 3 awesome.
I should probably elaborate on why the current filters situation falls short for me. The broadnibber plugin is cool. But it’s also terribly inconvenient. To use it I have to draw a path, apply the filter, realize my path needs to change, edit the path, apply the filter…and that gets to be very tedious over time. Live editing would be much faster, which would be a huge help when prototyping.
The Offset Curve preview and export options are cool if you’re doing a suitable script font like Letters From Sweden’s Line. But for a lot of other things it’s just not practical. Right now I’m working on a Kannada font. Offset Curve on export would be great for some glyphs, but not all of them. But it only works with all glyphs, both on export and when I am previewing my work as I design it. And it applies global values, which isn’t helpful if your uppercase and lowercase and figures and devanagari aren’t the same weight
Both of these situations could be remedied by just working with individually stroked paths where needed. For example, with Illustrator strokes I could chose to terminate a stroke with a vertical or horizontal line instead of just getting whatever happens to be perpendicular to the path. And if tapered paths were supported I could even make essential optical adjustments while still working with simple paths instead of manipulating multiple outlines. This kind of thing could rapidly speed up typeface development, especially for Latin script fonts and writing systems where type leans toward calligraphy such as Arabic and Kannada.
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The export filters have a include/exclude parameter. So you can use it with different values for some glyphs. The preview doesn’t work like this so it is only a small help.