fontspector already does the checking and it is free. This is not another checker.
It is a palette that runs fontspector on the open font, groups the results so one problem is one row with a count rather than one row per occurrence, says what each failure actually costs and how to fix it in Glyphs, and opens the offending glyph when you double click a row.
The thing I did not expect: fontspector reads the compiled binary, so it reports production names, and Glyphs works in source names. In the shot above it reports uni01F5 and the glyph is g_acute. Looking the reported name up directly resolved one of nine, then told the user the rest were missing when they were sitting there under another name.
Every explanation was checked against the check’s own rationale in the fontspector source, which caught fourteen of my drafts describing the wrong check.
Not released, no price. Is this worth anything to you, or would you just run the CLI and read the output? I would rather hear the second answer now than after building more of it.
I built this for myself already, because yes, I would use this.
My plugin focuses on outline issues and visually highlights them in Glyphs. Very useful.
Edit: ah, I see you have opened a compiled font in Glyphs. So your tool is for running Fontspector in Glyphs on exported fonts? Not sure how useful this is.
What I think is useful (what I described above) is running Fontspector in the open Glyphs file (by running it on binaries generated from the current master, for example).
My screenshot caused that, sorry. It does what you describe: it exports the active instances from the open font and runs fontspector on those, so it checks what your current masters would ship, not an earlier export. I shot it on Apple Chancery because a system TTF trips a lot of checks, and the title bar made it read like the opposite.
More interesting than mine: you built one already. What made you stop at outlines?
Nothing, I just didn’t develop it further. I was just focusing on the visual highlights, which only make sense for outline stuff. The other things are better solved like you describe it.
Your plugin sounds very useful, I think it would be of great interest to many. Not just font engineers, it also people who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily know how to use Fontspector.
We are thinking about adding extended font checking to Glyphs. I’m thinking about adding it to the font info window. I don’t think the right sidebar is the place. But the left sidebar is perfect for this, more space and doesn’t use space when not in use.
A question about scope. fontspector already does the checking and it is free, so what I have been working on is the layer above it: one entry per check saying what the failure actually costs and how to fix it in Glyphs, plus the jump to the glyph. Would the extended checking cover that layer, or only the checks?
