Suggestions: alignment zones

Glyphs
1

Just figuring out alignment zones on a multi-script family. Here are some ideas:

  • Show direction of alignments in glyph edit view (like the way direction is shown on ghost hints with those little arrows)
  • Ability to name/annotate alignment zones in info panel (for reference when having numerous alignment zones. Eg ‘Latin x-height’, ‘Burmese descender’, ‘Thai top marks’).
  • Ability to disable alignment zones (eg when subsetting Thai, the Burmese and/or Latin alignment zones could be made inactive; that would also allow more zones to be put in relevant for Thai.)
  • No settings for BlueShift and BlueFuzz?

EDIT:

  • Also, might be useful for the info panel to validate that none of the zones are overlapping (and if there’s a maximum size for zones).
1 Like
2

blueShift is available as a custom parameter. blueFuzz is deprecated, but you can use my BlueFuzzer script to replicate the functionality.

3

I have a plan for a rather big change in how alignment zones are handled. That would cover most of your requests.

The validation is indeed a good idea.

The main problem is that the number of zones is rather limited and you can have only one set for all glyphs/scrips. CJK fonts can handle these things but that mechanism isn’t supported for all other scripts.

4

the number of zones is rather limited

Yes, that’s what motivated my question. It’s a struggle to choose alignment zones when dealing with more than one script. If they had names and were switch-offable it would be easier to test different options. And different subsets could utilise different alignment zone configurations.

blueShift is available as a custom parameter.

I can’t find this, is it called something different?

I have a plan for a rather big change in how alignment zones are handled.

Look forward to seeing it!

5

That custom parameter is at the Font level. fyi.

1 Like
6

Any response on having different alignment zones per instance? At present I have to delete alignment zones for Thai ascenders when generating Burmese instances and vice versa. Being able to set zones differently for different instances, or being able to disable zones without deleting them would be very helpful.

7

Is there any progress with this issue?

8

Hopeful bump?

9

The change is really big, involves rewrite of a lot of UI. I’ll start with that soon, I hope.

10

Another hopeful bump? :smile:

11

We certainly did not forget about it :slight_smile:

1 Like
12

BTW where is your customZones plugin? I couldn’t see it on GitHub.

13

That one was just for you at that time. You were my beta tester, and I would publish it eventually. Then I guess I kind of forgot about it.

1 Like
14

Ah, you really are marvellous! :smile:

I think there was some question of whether custom alignment zones could be implemented in the font, as in the blue zones, rather than just as a reporter plugin. Was there any progress, @GeorgSeifert, about whether different scripts could have different baseline settings in an OTF?

15

(Answered via DM.)

16

One more suggestion in addition to @Bendy’s
Is to have on the view menu an option of (turn On/ Off) “Show Alignment Zones”
It is needed when editing multi-layer glyph which may contain paths in background also; While
Inactive layers are kept turned on as references to the process of drawing or adjusting Paths of the active layer;
It becomes very hard to differentiate between all paths in overlapping areas of Alignment Zones.

17%20PM
17%20PM835×672 87.5 KB

17

Was there any update on this at all? I’m in a similar position to @Bendy where I need to generate an instance including Thai, with the other instances not having additional Alignment Zones.

1 Like