Variable Components

Hey there,

Yesterday I got tired of Fonlab 7 and its bugs, so I’m finally transitioning into Glyphs :face_with_spiral_eyes:

My question is: if I have a variable font with a width axis… Is there any way of calibrating the weight of a component?

In FontLab there was something like this:

Thank you!

Not sure but perhaps something here could help?

Hey Craig @eliason ,

I’ve read the smart components thread but I couldn’t find what I was looking for :frowning:
but thanks anyway!

If I understand what I’m seeing in the FL video, I don’t think Glyphs has anything quite like that. You can do that general sort of thing with the RMX tools, which lots of Glyphs users swear by. Prepare to lash out another €99, but I think it’s worth it.

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I have though about something like this for some time but never got to it (the RMX-tools are so handy that I never needed it :wink: ).

But I just had an idea. The smart components can do all what’s needed. Just the UI is missing. But with the help of some scripting, I could set it up:

In the Macro Window, run this with the “two” glyph active in edit view:

part = GSPartProperty.alloc().initWithDict_({"bottomValue": 40,"name": "Weight", "topValue":100})
Layer.parent.setPartsSettings_([part])

Then run this with the lightest layer active:

Layer.setPartSelection_({"Weight":0})

And this with the heaviest layer:

Layer.setPartSelection_({"Weight":1})

Then in the glyph with the component to the two, select the component and you should see a slider in the lower right.

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Woah! :exploding_head: Can we expect this to remain supported? I could see this changing my workflow on a number things. Haven’t tried multiaxis…

That functionality will not go away. It needs better UI and some testing with multiple axis and more importantly with more masters per axis.

No luck with multi-axis, though I was able to add a couple of sliders :wink:

If you do get around to implementing this more widely, it would be better with more precision on component height/width %, or ability to set height explicitly in units. Right now I think it rounds to .1 or so

I wrote a script some time ago doing this. Haven’t used it in a while, but just did a quick test and seems to work with multiple axis. Can probably be greatly improved. Available from the Plugin manager (Scripts > TypeNurse).

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Nice! I will try these and see what happens. I guess it would be an interesting UI feature to include in the future :slight_smile:

Thanks everyone :raised_hands: