What's the best way to view point coordinates while editing?

Glyphs
1

I’m trying to see point coordinates while editing. What’s the best way to do so? This isn’t an existing option that I’m simply not seeing, is it?

For more context, my main two use cases are:

  • Sometimes want to see that points are aligned exactly, and I find X, Y position to be convenient.
  • Sometimes I want to be able to quickly tell where a point is, if I have a certain location in mind.
  • Sometimes I want to know if points are on the UPM grid or in a floating-point position.

One relatively old thread (Show node coordinates while editing) offers a ShowAllCoordinates plugin as a solution. However, this plugin triggers a warning form Glyphs that the plugin will slow down startup, and it doesn’t seem to work for me, anyway. If this script really might be the best starting point to see coordinates, this gives me two questions:

  1. What might be the best way for me to know what about the plugin is making it slow? I assume it may have too many loops going through points, but I’m not sure if there’s a better approach…
  2. If I take the plugin’s code and make it into a script, it gives me a relatively vague error in the output (see below). I see a couple of threads on this (Error on startup, 2.5b (1125): objc.error: GlyphPreviewView is overriding existing Objective-C class), but I’ve cleared out the related plugin, and I don’t see any further pointers on getting past it.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "show_coordinates.py", line 29, in <module>
    class ShowAllCoordinates( NSObject, GlyphsReporterProtocol ):
objc.error: ShowAllCoordinates is overriding existing Objective-C class

As always, I’m grateful for amazing tools like GlyphsApp, and I appreciate how much work goes into making things work so well. I would love a bit of guidance on how to see my point coordinates, though, whether it’s pointing out a preference I’m missing, or giving pointers on debugging the old plugin code. :slight_smile:

Thank you!

Extra info: I’m on Glyphs Version 2.5.2 (1172) and macOS Mojave 10.14.

2

Asked a friend and learned about the shortcut control + option + command.

This is just what I needed! Thanks for anticipating that need.

3

Have a look in Window > Plugin Manager. There are various free plug-ins that will help you. There you will also get the very latest version of the plug-ins. I suspect that this was also the problem you had with the plug-in in question.

Try Show Angled Handles.

Quickly holding down Ctrl-Opt-Cmd is not enough? Then try one of the Coordinates plug-ins in Plugin Manager.

That could be a task for a new Reporter plug-in. Or try Jens Kutílek’s Red Arrows plug-in, which has an option for pointing out nodes with decimal coordinates.

1 Like
4

Amazing; thanks for the extra advice! I’ll give those things a go.

5

I did not know there were options to be chosen with Red Arrows, how do I find them?

6

I believe @mekkablue is referring to the menu option added by the Red Arrows plugin at Edit > Select Glyphs with Outline Errors that includes a pop-up window to select the types of errors to consider.

1 Like