Proper way to have different diacritic positioning between UC and lc (alternative to the .case method)

Design
1

I know about the diacritic vs diacrtic.case feature in glyphs which I have used before in a typeface that had different outlines for UC and lc diacritics. I’m working on a design where I want to work with the same combining diacritics for both lc and UC but I want the UC diacritics to be closer to the base glyph.

I am wondering what is the most elegant way of achieving this in Glyphs. I know that I can go into the UC characters and move the .top anchors manually (or with a script) but I like that they are automatically compiled (makes it safe for QA). Is there a custom parameter or something where I can change the auto vertical position of the UC anchors (when they are being automatically positioned/compiled)

I don’t want to use the .case method because I will end up with a bunch of duplicate chars (as this position difference only happens in one of the masters)

Thank you for your help!

2

The default anchor position you get by pressing Cmd+U is just a suggestion. You most likely need to move them horizontally. So moving them down a bit is OK. You can add a global guide to have a visual feedback that they at the right position.

3

Thanks Georg. This all sounds good. I wanted to write to check if there was another solution that I was missing. It would be interesting to be able to add a custom parameter at Master level where you can choose where the command+U populates the top anchor for different sets of glyphs (or any other anchor like I would like the ogonek anchor to populate in the baseline because of how I draw etc.)

Thanks for your answer.

4

I do as Georg suggests, and make global guides for each anchor position and name it as “lc-anchor” “Cap-anchor” or such.

1 Like
5

If you assign a filter to the guide, you don’t need to call them “lc” or “Cap” and you reduce clutter.

2 Likes
6

How do you do that?

7

Select a global guide and do Edit > Info for Selection (Cmd + Cmd+Option+i).

1 Like
8

Under the Masters panel inside the info window, I’ve been experimenting with adding detailed zones /metrics for different charsets (Small caps etc.). It’s been working great and a couple things are coming in handy. I wonder if the Anchors can auto populate if the user defines a diacritics base filter in the Metrics panel rather than the x-height or Capheight default. Because there you can add deeper filters such as script or case or other…

Maybe I’m oversimplifying but I think intuitively that’s how I expect the interface to behave? In any case, as always, thank you for your support on all of this.