User-defined Composite Glyphs Alignment Issue

Hey guys,

This may well be the intended behavior, but here’s a quick scenario to describe the problem (this issue comes up regularly):

  • I have a glyph comprised soley (or partially) of components (user-defined, not Glyphs-defined like accented characters). A good example is the /divide glyph, which in my case I’ve built from the /minus and /period glyphs.
  • If I change the spacing of any of the glyphs used to build this composite glyph, it will often ruin the arrangement of the components, and leave the /divide looking wonky.
  • I have Automatic Alignment turned off on both components (/minus and /period) within /divide.

I figure this is because Glyphs defines the components’ positioning by factoring in sidebearings. I would prefer (at least in my case here) for the positioning to be defined by the bounds of the shapes within the components, and for sidebearings to be ignored. I haven’t thought through all possible usages (I’m sure there’s something important I’m forgetting about), so I’m sure that sidebearings need to be factored in, however in the case I’m describing here, it’s very frustrating having to go through your font and fix a myriad of glyphs that become distorted each time the glyphs they use have changes made to their spacing.

Does that make sense?

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

Dave.

The ideal scenario for me would be to have the option to select a component which would define LSB and RSB. In case of @dvclmn I would select minus. Such component could have different color or little icon.

The option to select a component defining LSB and RSB would be also ideal for glyphs combining components and curves at the same time (oslash, ogonek with customized ogonek, etc.).

Then you have to use anchors.

That is already possible if you use attachment anchors, e.g. #connect and _#connect, and force alignment.

This is perfect. Thanks for the heads up, Rainer.