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29 April–1 May 2016: Glyphs Workshop in Innsbruck

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Zweieinhalb Tage weg vom Alltag, um die erste eigene Schrift zu beginnen – oder eine begonnene endlich fertig zu bringen: Dieser Workshop mit dem erfahrenen Schriftproduzenten und Glyphs-Guru Rainer Scheichelbauer richtet sich sowohl an blutige Anfänger als auch an alte Haudegen und Fontlab-Umsteiger.

Designing a Schrift. Typedesign mit Glyphs 2

  • When?

    Freitag, 29. April von 13 – 18 Uhr
    Samstag, 30. April von 9 – 18 Uhr
    Sonntag, 1. Mai von 10 – 15 Uhr

  • Who?

    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

  • Where?

    WEI SRAUMforum
    Andreas-Hofer-Straße 27
    6020 Innsbruck

  • How much?

    EUR 290 für Vereinsmitglieder
    EUR 360 für Nichtmitglieder

  • For whom?

    GrafikdesignerInnen, Erfahrungen in der Typografie und mit Vektoren nützlich, aber nicht notwendig.

  • Prerequisites

    eigenes MacBook ab OS X 10.9.1
    Glyphs 2 und InDesign oder ein Web-Browser (zum Testen)

  • Links

    Info

Mit einfachen Kniffen wird der Blick fürs gestalterische und technische Detail geschärft. Im Workshop wird der Font-Editor Glyphs eingesetzt, für den Rainer Scheichelbauer auch das Handbuch geschrieben hat. Mit der Software wird gründliche digitale Schriftproduktion so einfach und schnell wie nie zuvor.

Die TeilnehmerInnen können eine ermäßigte Glyphs-Lizenz erwerben.


5–6 March 2016: Glyphs Introduction in Sofia

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The two-day workshop is an introductory practical training of the capabilities of Glyphs. The workshop is suitable for designers and those tempted by typography, but lacking technical skills. After completion of the course each participant will have the necessary minimum of technical knowledge and skills to create their own fonts. The proceeds of this event will be donated to Typofest 2016.

Glyphs Workshop at Betahaus

During the practical tasks Botyo Nikoltchev will be joined by Annie Petrova of Fontfabric and Boril Karaivanov of Redesign.

Reusing Shapes: Corner Components

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So, you read all about serif components and their benefits. And they are great for slab serifs. But what if you do not want to mix components and paths, because you do not want to risk accidental shifts? And, what if you want bracketed serifs with a smooth transition, rather than clunky slabs?

cornercomponents-1

There’s a simple solution for that problem: corner components. They are connected to individual nodes in your glyph, like this:

cornercomponents-2

Cool, looks like magic. Here’s how we do that:

Building the Corner Components

All we need is two new glyphs with special naming: A corner component must start with _corner and have an arbitrary dot suffix. The underscore at the beginning of the name ensures that the glyph will be created as non-exporting. Add two new glyphs, and call them, for example, _corner.leftSerif for the left serif, and _corner.rightSerif for the right serif. The best way to do this is Glyph > Add Glyphs (Cmd-Shift-G), typing _corner.leftSerif _corner.rightSerif, and pressing the Generate button.

But let’s begin with drawing a serif. Our left serif could look like this:

cornercomponents-3

As you can see, the serif is located largely outside the glyph’s width, and the part where the serif should stick to the stem is on the left sidebearing. The same goes for the right side:

cornercomponents-4

There are two things you need to pay attention to: Firstly, the path direction needs to be counter-clockwise. The arrows at both ends of the path indicate the path’s direction. If you want to flip the path’s direction, you can do so with Paths > Reverse Contours (Crtl-Opt-Cmd-R), or via Reverse Selected Contours in the context menu of a path.

Secondly, the vertical end point should be on the left sidebearing, and the horizontal end point on the baseline.

Pro tip: If you add an anchor named origin, then the path doesn’t have to be on the left side-bearing. But keep in mind that the path should wind around the origin anchor exactly as it would around the origin point.

Adding the Corners

Now, how do we get our serifs to stick to our glyphs? Easy. Go to your glyph and select a corner node, then right-click on it to open the drop-down menu, and select Add Corner.

cornercomponents-5

In the dialog that follows, select the serif, and voilà, your serif gets injected into the path! You can also copy and paste multiple corners, if you have a lot of serifs.

cornercomponents-11

Corner Components on Diagonal Stems

Corner on diagonal stems are adjusted automatically, by slanting the outermost segment of the corner component into the angle of the stem. Glyphs needs to do some guessing, and can’t always guess right, so sometimes you will need to adjust the alignment of the corner component. You can do that in the grey info box:

cornercomponents-10

Use the left alignment for left serifs, and the right alignment for right serifs. The center alignment can be useful for ink traps. Spoiler alert: you can't only use corner components for serifs, but anything you can hang on a corner. Like, spikes, or something.

You can add anchors named left for the left serif, and right for the right serif. The left/right anchors control the way the corner component is inserted. The further away from the origin point, the bigger the adjustment:

cornercomponents-8

For bracketed serifs, the anchor usually has to be a bit above the visual thickness of the serif.

cornercomponents-9

In case of slab serifs, the left/right anchor has to be in the corner of the serif:

cornercomponents-7

Adjustments

If you click on your corner component node, you will see a second grey box, next to the grey glyph info box beneath your glyph. If you can’t see the nodes, go to View > Show Hints. That is because technically, corner components are hints. There you can change a few things regarding the serif. In our example, we changed the width of one serif, by changing the percentage here:

cornercomponents-6

Mirroring Serifs

Since version 2.2, you can mirror your serifs horizontally and/or vertically. That way, if your serifs are symmetrical, you only have to draw one serif, and mirror it, where necessary. All paths will be reversed, and anchors adapted accordingly, i.e., left anchors will be treated as right anchors and vice versa. You can do that by putting -100% for the width or height in the grey info box of the serif:

cornercomponents-12

More Tricks with Corner Components

You can actually do much more fun things with your corner components. All you need to do is play around a bit with those left and right anchors. For example, you can create funny inktraps easily. Or, you can experiment with shapes:

cornercomponents-15

You can even add corners to round shapes, all you need to do is double click the node you want to add your corner to (it should be blue). Have fun!

Complex Corner Components

Also, since version 2.2, you can add any number of closed paths in a _corner glyph to compliment the open corner path. Their path direction is preserved, of course. So, now you can make even more cool things with your serifs, like the (long overdue return of the) page curl:

cornercomponents-13

Well, pretty easy. So, have fun with your serifs!

How to Make a Monoline Font

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Monoline fonts are fonts that share the same stem thickness vertically and horizontally. It is great for handwritten fonts, or display fonts like this one:

monoline18

Drawing Paths

The first step to create a font is, of course, to draw paths. Duh. But monoline fonts need open paths. The ends of open paths are displayed as flat nodes instead of round ones, and there is an arrow, showing you the path direction:

monoline1

Looks good! But those paths are only the ‘skeleton’ of a monoline font. Open paths can’t be exported. So, now we need to put some flesh on its bones. There’s a few ways to do that. Read on.

Offset Curve Filter

The first way is the Filter Offset Curve. Just go to Filter > Offset Curve to invoke it.

monoline3

Enter the values of your choice and check the Make Stroke option. You should then see an expanded preview of your glyph. The Position setting controls the distribution of the expansion. At 0%, the path will only expand to the right. At 100%, the path will only expand to the left. At 50%, the expansion will be evenly distributed to both sides of the path, which is probably what you want. Right and left sides are determined by the path orientation.

monoline13

With the Auto Stroke option, the vertical dimensions will be kept intact. In that case, the offset position will be assumed at 50%.

But don’t press the Offset button yet. Instead, click on the gear wheel. Choose Copy Custom Parameter. Because if you do that, this will put the values into our clipboard as a custom parameter, and thus, we will be able to work non-destructively.

monoline4

Now, press Cancel in the Offset Curve window, then go to File > Font Info (Cmd-I), and choose the Instances tab. Click the plus button in the bottom left corner of the window to add a new instance, and name it something striking. I call mine ‘Offset 20’ because I feel totally creative today. Now click in the white area of the Custom Parameters field to set the focus, and press Cmd-V to paste the previously copied custom parameter.

monoline5

Now, when you export your font, the custom parameter will set in and you’ll see your offset active. To export the font, go to File > Export (Cmd-E) and choose a file format. Leave Remove Overlap unchecked, though. Because this option would delete our precious open paths. We suggest to test your font in Adobe programs.

For a preview of what your exported font will look like, you can activate View > Show Offset Preview. Glyphs will show a grey preview in Edit view, provided the filter was used once before. If it was, Glyphs saves the value in its preferences and the preview reads its values from there. Tip: Just apply Offset Curve once and undo it straight afterwards with Cmd-Z.

monoline6

Round Corners

Sometimes, corners and endings can look weird. In this example, the corner looks really ugly and the ending is pretty weird, too. Yuck!

monoline14

If you want your font to have rounded corners, there’s an easy way to get there. Go to Filter > Round Corners and choose your radius. By checking Visual Corrections, Glyphs adjusts the radius of your corner roundings, so they appear the same size.

monoline10

Again, copy the custom parameter code by clicking on the gear wheel and choosing Copy Custom Parameter. Go to File > Font Info (Cmd-I) and press Cmd-V to paste the custom parameter after the Offset Curve parameter. Now, export again, and choose the file format.

Noodler Filter

To get the results of Offset Curve and Round Corners in one step. Just download mekkablue’s Noodler filter. To install it, double click on the glyphsFilter file and confirm the installation dialog. It should be available after restarting Glyphs. You can find it at Filter > Noodler.

monoline8

Change the value of Thicknesses according to your design. Like before, you can work non-destructively, don’t apply it directly, but click on the gear wheel and choose Copy Custom Parameter. Go to Font Info > Instances > Custom Parameters (Cmd-I) and, like before, paste the code with Cmd-V. Alternatively, you can add a new Instance and paste it there. This way, you’ll have two separate versions of your font for comparison.

But there is a difference between Noodler on the one hand, and Offset Curve plus Round Corners, on the other hand. The Noodler filter adds a round ending to the path, while Round Corners rounds the end of the path:

monoline9

Problems

Problems can occur if you have a path with double bends, i.e. a segment that first bends clockwise, and then counter-clockwise, and vice versa. In this case, you should add a node on the inflection point of the segment to keep your thickness. To do that, hold Shift while clicking on the path. Glyphs will find the nearest extremum or inflection point, and insert a node there. Here is an example of how a double bended path looks like with and without an inflection point when Offset Curve is active:

monoline16

Or you can use mekkablue’s Insert Inflections filter.

There could also be problems when your curves are too narrow.

monoline17

To prevent that, well, you should draw wider curves. Sometimes extremum points and infliction nodes can help, too.

If you have acute corners and Round Corner gives you weird results, you can split the path in two. To do so, select the Pen Tool (P) and click onto the node you want to divide.

monoline19

BroadNibber Filter

If you want to turn your glyphs into broad-nib strokes, you can use mekkablue’s BroadNibber filter. Again, you install it by double clicking the glyphsFilter file, confirming the dialog that pops up and restarting Glyphs. After the restart you will have the menu item Filter > Broad Nibber.

monoline11

The filter simulates a broad-nibbed pen. Experiment with the values in the dialog, then click the gear wheel, choose Copy Custom Parameter from the context menu and paste the code in the Custom Parameters field of an instance in Font Info > Instances (Cmd-I).

Roughen

This one is a rather funny filter. Go to Filter > Roughen.

monoline7

Your path gets chopped up into little straight path segments and the nodes are randomly scattered. If you have your Offset Curve preview on, you’ll see the end result straight away. Again, copy the custom parameter code by clicking on the gear wheel and choosing Copy Custom Parameter. Go to your Font Info (Cmd-I) and paste the code with Cmd-V, or add a new Instance and paste it there.

Combining the Filters

If you want to combine multiple filters, you need to watch out. The order of the custom parameters is really important.

monoline15

For The Geeks

If you’re into monoline fonts a lot, you should check out mekkablue’s plugin ‘ShowOffsetCurveParameterPreview’. It calculates the GlyphsFilterOffsetCurve parameters in active instances for the given glyph and draws those instances behind your paths. It quietly adds extremum and inflection nodes to your preview outlines. But it does not give you a full preview of the final instance, because it does not show the effect of any other parameters. This plugin is focused on helping you spot path offset problems. By default, it draws all active instances on top of each other using a semitransparent color, changing its hue from instance to instance:

monoline12

All instances are shown live. Again, to install it, double click the glyphsFilter file, confirm the intallation dialog, and restart Glyphs. After installation, it will add the menu item View > Show OffsetCurve Parameter Preview.

Another one for the geeks: You can add multiple values in mekkablue’s Noodler filter. Check it out:

monoline20

Have fun experimenting!

SAMPLE FONT: Bussi by Stella Chupik (first example)

Why There is no Windows Version of Glyphs

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Every once in a while, we receive a request for a Windows version of Glyphs. While we do not generally say no to going cross-platform, such a venture currently appears economically unfeasible. Even if every request would translate into a sold license (which is a very optimistic assumption), the sales would not cover the additional costs for development and support. And we are sad to say, not by long shot.

To make matters worse, most of these few requests are not for the full version of Glyphs, but for Glyphs Mini. So, we would have to invest a six-figure number for an expected revenue of a few hundred dollars per year. We cannot do that. However, if you believe the Windows market deserves that investment, and you are that investor willing to take such a risk, please do get in touch. However, be advised that you will probably lose a lot of money this way.

Type Design is a Mac Business

For now, all we can say is that type design seems to be happening almost exclusively on the Mac platform. We see that at every conference we visit, at every school at which we give workshops, and in the many personal conversations we have with fellow type designers. In other words, it would be cheaper for us to hand out Macs to all the people asking for a Windows version than to actually produce and manage a Windows version. But we do not do that either, obviously.

Until that changes, we have to decline those requests. Sorry.

How to Install Your Glyphs License

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You finally got your download link for your Glyphs license via mail and now you don’t know what to do with it? Well, first you need to be quick, because the download link in your email is only active for two weeks. Before you can install your Glyphs license, you need to meet those conditions:

  1. You are running the minimum OS version that the app requires
  2. You have the latest Glyphs 2 version
  3. The app is called Glyphs.app and in the Applications folder
  4. You opened the app at least once

If you checked all these things, you should be able to simply double click the license file. Be sure that the file has the suffix .glyphs2License, otherwise it won’t work.

license2

After double clicking the file, a dialog should appear:

license1

Now click OK and that’s basically it. Yay!

Troubleshooting

Glyphs won’t open?

Maybe Glyphs won’t even open in the first place, and you get this security dialog:

license4

If that is the case, open your System Preferences and choose Security & Privacy. In the tab General you should see options to change which programs will be allowed to be opened.

license5 license6

Check the one saying Mac App Store and identified developers. Now you should be able to open Glyphs.
If double clicking the file doesn’t open Glyphs, try right clicking the license file and selecting Open with, then choose Glyphs.

license3

File Permissions

Still doesn’t work? Maybe there’s something wrong with your file permissions. Go to ~/Library/Preferences and find a folder called ByHost. Right click on the folder and choose Get Info from the context menu. Alternatively, you can press Cmd-I. In the info window that appears, you will find a Sharing and Permission options. Check if your user has the permissions to Read and Write.

license8

Back to the ByHost folder. You should find one or more files starting with com.GeorgSeifert.Glyphs....

license7

Delete all those files, then try again.

10–11 May 2016: Glyphs at Typo Labs 2016

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Both Georg Seifert and Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer will be presenting and conducting workshops in the two-day Typo Labs 2016 on 10 and 11 May 2016. We will present the all-new version 2.3 of Glyphs, so don’t miss this chance to be one of the first to get your hands on the latest and greatest features of Glyphs.

We will show the new API (big thanks to Yanone!) in a half-day, hands-on classroom and in a two-hour, run-down workshop. Or, get the executive summary of the latest feature additions in the presentation on the second day.

Aaaaand… we are giving away one ticket! Tweet a screenshot of your Macro Window addressed to @glyphsapp with hashtag #typolabs. Astonish us, the most creative entry wins! We will pick a winner on 6 April, midnight CET. Good luck!

GlyphsSDK: Write Your Own Glyphs Plugin

  • When?

    Tuesday 10 May, 10:00–13:00

  • Who?

    Georg Seifert
    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

  • Where?

    Forum Factory
    Besselstraße 13, 10969 Berlin
    Find us in the Classroom.

  • How much?
  • For whom?

    Glyphs users who want to take the step

  • Prerequisites

    MacBook with OS X 10.9.5+, Glyphs 2.3 and your favourite text editor (e.g., TextMate or Sublime). Basic knowledge of Python recommended.

  • Links

    http://typotalks.com/labs/schedule/talk/?tid=35744

Thanks to the great work of Yanone, Glyphs 2.3 sports an updated API and an all-new SDK, which make extending Glyphs truly easy. This classroom takes you through the creation of two plugins, and points you to useful resources for writing your own code.

Parameters, Plugins & More: Advanced Techniques in Glyphs

Get useful tips and workflow suggestions for advanced font family production in this two-hour session with the makers of Glyphs. Georg and Rainer Erich will explain batch-editing techniques, custom parameters, interpolation tricks, customising glyph data, and also cover some of the latest additions to Glyphs 2.3.

Glyphs 2.3 and the GlyphsSDK: Latest Developments

What’s new in Glyphs? The latest release of the popular font editor brings some major improvements to both the interface and internal workings of the application. In this quick rundown, the makers of Glyphs will explain the latest additions, and also cover recent changes in the API.

4–6 May 2016: Graphic Design Journeys 2016, Málaga

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Glyphs is honoured to be one of the sponsors at the Andalusian Graphic Design Journeys in Málaga, Spain. For the first time in Andalusia, there will be a two-day Glyphs workshop for designers of all levels on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, 4 and 4 May. And Wednesday, 4 May, will also see an on-stage presentation by Glyphs team member Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer.

Workshop: Typedesign with Glyphs

  • When?

    Wednesday and Thursday, 4 and 5 May

  • Who?

    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

  • Where?

    Escuela de Arte
    El Ejido, 3
    29013 Málaga, Spain

  • How much?

    EUR 10

  • For whom?

    Graphic designers interested in type design, and type designers interested in switching to Glyphs

  • Prerequisites

    Bring your MacBook with Mac OS X 10.9.5+ and the latest version of Glyphs installed.

  • Links

    Workshop Info
    Telmö Dice Info

Workshop participants are eligible for a discount on the full version.

Making Fonts in Glyphs

  • When?

    Wednesday, 4 May

  • Who?

    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

  • Where?

    Escuela de Arte
    El Ejido, 3
    29013 Málaga, Spain

  • How much?
  • For whom?
  • Prerequisites
  • Links

    Telmö Dice Info

This stage presentation will give you a quick rundown of the possibilities of the font editor Glyphs by Georg Seifert. Live on stage, Rainer Erich will build a few letters, export and apply the font, and show you some tricks on how to integrate Glyphs in your graphic design workflow.


13–23 June 2016: Glyphs Workshop at Typographics NYC 2016

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We are very happy to be sponsors at Typographics 2016. Typographics is an 11-day design festival devoted to contemp­orary typo­graphy, with talks, work­shops, and tours focusing on where typo­graphy is today and where its future may lie. It will be held at The Cooper Union in New York City.

Matteo Bologna will give an introductory Workshop for Glyphs on June 15, 2016. For more information, see below.

Workshop: Type Design for Non-Type Designers

  • When?

    Wednesday, June 15, 2016 from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM

  • Who?

    Matteo Bologna

  • Where?

    Cooper Union (room TBD) - Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003

  • How much?

    USD 286.59

  • For whom?
  • Prerequisites

    Basic Adobe Illustrator skills are necessary. You must bring your own laptop with a full or trial version of the font design program Glyphs or Glyphs Mini already installed (download a free 30-day trial). Sorry no Windows, no Fontlab, no Robofont. No prior experience is required in font design, but some experience with Bézier-based vector drawing tools is useful.

  • Links

    Workshop Info

The workshop will introduce you to the basic skills necessary for the wild journey into the super fun world of type design. In this class you will learn the basics of designing and generating a typeface with Adobe Illustrator and Glyphs.
In the morning session we will learn the basics of drawing a font, generate the font, and use it in InDesign. In the afternoon, we will add additional letters to the font, learning how to kern them, add diacritics, and produce the combined letters. At the end of the day, we will not have a finished font, but a respectable start.

1–3 June 2016: Kerning 2016 in Faenza

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We are pleased to announce that we are sponsors at this year’s Kerning Conference in Faeza, Italy, at the beginning of June. And to this lovely occasion, we are giving away two tickets! The first two people to contact us will get a ticket, so be quick! Just send us an email to res (at) this website without www. Good luck!

Creating a Pixel Font

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Creating a pixel font is easy if you know how it’s done. You probably have seen the video-tutorial about pixel fonts we made some time ago. But there’s more to it.

Start a New Font

First, open Glyphs (duh!) and select File > New (Cmd-N), to create a new font document. Now, before you start building your letters, go to File > Font Info (Cmd-) and name your font something striking, we’ll call ours ‘Pixelfont’, because we’re so creative. Then, select Other Settings, where you’ll find the options for Grid Spacing. The Grid Spacing value defines how coordinates get rounded. The default value is 1. For pixel fonts, we want all tools and all modifications to always snap to the grid, so we set higher values. This ensures that ‘pixels’ in your font are automatically on the correct position. Let’s set our Grid Spacing to 50:

pixel1

Why a grid step of 50? In a nutshell, we choose 50 because it divides 1000 comfortably, and it gives a pixel perfect rendering at certain sizes.

Calculating screen sizes: Screen size is measured in PPM, pixels per em. If one em contains 1000 units, which is the default UPM (units per em) value in PostScript-based fonts, then (1000÷50=) 20 grid steps, or pixels, fit into one em. In other words, one font pixel will be exactly one screen pixel at 20 PPM. For a screen resolution of 72 ppi (pixels per inch), (20 PPM ÷ 72 ppi × 72 points in an inch =) 20 points. This is the default resolution assumed for Macs and Adobe apps. On Windows, we calculate with 96 ppi, so we reach 20 PPM at (20÷96×72=) 15 points.

Drawing a Pixel

In Font View, click on the plus button on the bottom left to add a new glyph. Double click on the name (newGlyph) and rename it to pixel:

pixel2

Double click the glyph area to open the glyph in a new Edit tab. You’ll see a grid according to your grid settings. Select the Rectangle tool (F) from the tool bar and draw a rectangle exactly as wide and high as one grid square is. You will notice that the path automatically snaps to the grid. Draw the square at the origin point, i.e., where the baseline crosses the left sidebearing.

pixel3

Right-click anywhere on the canvas to open the context menu. Un-check the Export option. We don’t want to export our pixel, because it can’t be typed anyway and it would just waste bandwidth in our final font.

pixel6

That’s basically all the paths you need for a pixel font. Yay!

Building the Glyphs

To start with your alphabet, open a glyph you like very much by double clicking on it in Font view. I’ll start with the f, because I like fluffy bunnies. Go to Glyph > Add Component (Shift-Cmd-C), select pixel from the dialog menu, and press Select.

pixel4

Select the pixel component and press Cmd-C to copy it. Now, press Cmd-V to paste it and move it with your arrow keys or your mouse. Repeat this step until you are satisfied with your Glyph. Alternatively, you can also drag the component while pressing the Option key to duplicate it. And you can do all this with multiple pixel components at once, so you’ll be even quicker. You can also drag your mouse to select multiple components, but don’t forget to press the Option key while doing so, because a regular rectangular selection only selects paths.

Well, this is our f:

pixel5

Now, have fun building your glyphs!

Batch-Edit

The default glyph width is 600 units. That does not look so nice:

pixel17

To start with the spacing, you can make sure all your glyphs have the same left and right sidebearings. First select all glyphs (Cmd-A). Then, in Font view, enter the values in the bottom left window. The values for your left and right sidebearing should be multiples of your grid spacing, in our case, we simply set them to 50.

pixel11

Now, it is easy to make indiviual changes. If you want to know more about spacing, read our tutorial on Spacing.

pixel18

Looks much better now, don't you think?

Pixel Variants

Of course, you can play around a little with your pixel. For instance, you don’t have to make a square:

pixel7

To do that, you can either change the shape of your pixel or add a new glyph called pixel.circle, for example. You’ll notice that, when drawing a circle, it will be build to something like this:

pixel8

This is because the Subdivision subdivides the grid step, so snapping happens on the grid subdivisions, not directly on the grid. If you set this value to 25, for example, your circles will look like this:

pixel9

Starting with version 2.3, offcurve points will not be rounded to the grid anymore. So, in this case, a subdivision value of 2 would suffice.

Set the Subdivision value to something that makes sense for your pixel design. For full flexibility, set it to the same value as your Grid Spacing.

So, you have two (or more) pixel variants, but how to use them? Go to your Font Info (Cmd-I) and select the Instances tab. Add two new instances by clicking the plus button twice. The instances will be called Regular by default, but you can rename them in the Style Name field. We named ours square and circle, because we want to have one instance with square pixels and one with circle-shaped pixels. Make sure you have two pixel-glyphs in your font, e.g. pixel and pixel.circle. Now, add a custom parameter in the instance you want to have an alternative pixel, by clicking the plus button next to Custom Parameter. In the Property field, write Rename Glyphs, or choose it from the dropdown menu after clicking the arrows. If you double click the Value field, a dialog will open. Write the glyph you want to replace, in our case we want the pixel.circle glyph to replace the pixel glyph, so we type:

pixel.circle=pixel
pixel26

When creating multiple instances with different pixel shapes, you can use them as a layer font. In this example we superimposed a square pixel instance, a circle pixel instance and a triangle pixel instance:

pixel27

Hinting

If you have more complex pixels, you have to make sure that hinting is turned off. So, when you export your file (Cmd-E), uncheck the Autohint option. Why? Read all about what hinting can do, and what not, in our tutorial about PostScript Autohinting.

pixel10

Post-Processing with Filters

If you want to experiment a little with your font, you can try some of the built-in filters. Again, check your Subdivision value, or some filters might give you an unsatisfying result. For example, if you apply the filter Round Corners to your pixel square, you’ll get this:

pixel12

You can either apply the filter directly with OK, or, what I recommend, add it as a custom parameter. To do the latter, do not press OK in the filter dialog, but instead click on the gear wheel in the left bottom corner and select Copy Custom Parameter. Then, press Cancel, and open the Font Info (Cmd-I), go to the Instances tab, click on the plus button in the left bottom corner, and add a new instance. Change the style name (I call mine Rounded) and click anywhere inside the Custom Parameter field to activate it for pasting. Now, simply press Cmd-V to paste the parameter we just copied in the filter dialog. Ta-dah!

It’s a good idea to set the grid spacing with a custom parameter, too. Click the plus button to add a new parameter. For Property, simply write Grid Spacing after double clicking the Property field, or choose it from the dropdown menu after clicking on the arrows. Next, double click the Value field and write 1 for a grid spacing of 1.

pixel13 pixel21

With custom parameters, you can apply filters on different instances at export time, and thus don’t have to destroy the original pixel path. In other words, you can non-destructively build a pixel complete font family!

In this example, we used the filter Roughen. The pixel outline gets chopped up and the nodes are randomly scattered:

pixel20

Again, copy the custom parameter code by clicking on the gear wheel and choosing Copy Custom Parameter. Go to your Font Info (Cmd-I) and paste the code with Cmd-V, or add a new Instance and paste it there.

Here we used the filter Offset Curve without the Make Stroke option:

pixel22

Click on the gear wheel and copy the custom parameter code. Go to the Font Info (Cmd-I) and paste the code with Cmd-V, or add a new Instance and paste it there.

Of course, you can apply multiple filters on one instance. In our example, we applied the filters Round Corner, Offset Curve and Remove Overlap:

pixel14

Look closely: The order of the filters is very important. Glyphs will execute them from first to last. In our case, we first apply Offset Curve to expand the outline by 3 units, so the pixels overlap a little bit. Then we apply Remove Overlap in order to, you may have guessed it, remove the overlap and unite the pixels into one path. Then again, Offset Curve with -3 units brings the outline back to its original dimension. After that, we apply Round Corners to make our font smooth. The positive value (+20) in the first Round Corner parameter takes care of the outer corners, and the negative value (-20) in the second Round Corner parameter rounds the inner corners. Although, the negative value can only be added as a custom parameter manually. If you copy the custom parameter via the filter dialog, you'll only get the positive value.

pixel15

But, why all the fuss? Easy. If we hadn’t used multiple filters and had just used Round Corners straight away, we would have received a very different result:

pixel16

In the next example, we use Offset Curve to expand the outline by 3 units again, apply Remove Overlap to unite the pixels and apply Offset Curve with -3 units to move the outline back to where it was, just like in the previous example. But this time, we use also the Roughen filter:

pixel23

In the following example, we wanted our pixel font to have a contour only. To achieve that, we use Offset Curve +3 units again, apply Remove Overlap and apply Offset Curve with -3 units, just like in the previous examples. Then we add one more Offset Curve filter, but this time with the Make Stroke option activated.

pixel28

So, have fun with playing around, but keep the order of the filters in mind!

Third-Party Filters

Want to try more filters than the default ones in Glyphs?
Mekkablue’s Shadow filter is designed to turn your glyphs into shadowed versions of themselves. Take a look:

pixel19 pixel29

Another fun filter is mekkablue’s filter Cut and Shake. It exercises cuts across the glyphs, and then both moves and rotates the resulting parts by random amounts, for which the user can specify maximums. In our case, we again used Offset Curve to expand the outline by 3 units, applied Remove Overlap and applied Offset Curve with -3 units to move the outline, before using the Cut and Shake filter:

pixel24 pixel25

Scripts for Pixel Fonts

There are a few handy scripts for Glyphs that help you with your pixel fonts. In mekkablue’s GitHub repository you'll find a folder dedicated to pixelfonts. For more info and installation instructions take a look at the readme.

Mekkablue’s script Pixelate, for example, turns outline glyphs into pixel glyphs by inserting pixel components, resetting widths and moving outlines to the background.

New Features in Glyphs 2.3

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Welcome to Version 2.3 of Glyphs! Take a moment and read through what’s new, and we’re sure you will agree that this is the best app version ever. As always, update by choosing Glyphs > Check for Updates…

Pencil Tool

We added a new tool: the Pencil (shortcut B). The Pencil tool is the fourth icon in the tool bar and allows you to ‘draw’ paths freehandedly. Just draw a line and when you stop drawing it automatically converts your cursor movement into a path:

pencil-tool

Cool thing! Naturally, you’ll have to do some cleaning up. But the tablet users amongst you will love this, we’re sure.

select-all

While we are at it, there is another change in the toolbar: The Select All Layers tool is now packed behind the Select tool. You can toggle between both selection modes with Shift-V. This helps keep our toolbar clean and tidy.

Open Corner and Reconnect Nodes on Steroids

You can now open multiple corners at once! Simply select all the nodes where you want an overlap, then choose Open Corner from the context menu:

open-corners

Speaking of opened corners: You can use overlaps for invisibility, too, or white opened corners. Since it is hard to describe, we’ll let a picture speak for itself:

invisible-corners

This is going to be huge. For the invisible opened corners to work, they must be small enough. The threshold depends on the lengths of the last segments with the opened corners. The algorithm is a little more complicated, but in general, the visible parts must be longer than the invisible ones.

Likewise, you can now also reconnect many node pairs at once. Select all pairs you want to reconnect, open the context menu and pick Reconnect Nodes. Ta-dah!

reconnect-nodes

 

Improved Metrics

Perhaps you already noticed the little yellow icons in Font view. They indicate that the current Metrics Key is not in sync, and may need updating.

metricswarning

Speaking of Metrics Keys, you can now combine Metrics Key calculations with auto alignment! To do that, put an equals sign followed by plus or minus and a number into the sidebearing of your auto-aligned glyph. E.g., =+20 will extend the auto-aligned sidebearing by 20 units, while =-15 will decrease ist by 15 units.

dcaron-auto-alignment

 

Font Note

In File > Font Info (Cmd-I), you will find a new tab, Note. It stores the Font Note, previously only accessible through a custom parameter and a third-party Palette extension. This will make collaboration and keeping to-do lists much easier. Oh, and did we mention, it also supports some Markdown highlighting:

fontnote

Type in anything you like. It will not be exported into the OpenType font.
 

State of Component Alignment

​It is time for a little recap, because every Glyphs user should know this. There are two different ways components are positioned automatically.

  1. Aligning components is the first one. Take, for instance, two letter components. They are put next to each other just as if you would type them. Aligning takes both spacing and kerning into account. That may sound like old news to you. But two things are new about it in 2.3:

    • More glyphs are aligned by default. Apart from letters, alignment is now on by default for Spacing Combining marks and small figures. That includes subscript, superscript, and fraction figures. The small-number alignment behaves differently: only the horizontal placement is enforced automatically, following the italic angle if needed. You can freely move them vertically. Try it, it’s cool.

    • And then, you can now force automatic alignment for any component, not just the default cases. To do that, simply right-click a component and choose Enable Automatic Alignment from its context menu.
       
  2. Attachment is the second major way of automatic component positioning. That means that anchors are used to position a shape relative to another one. Again, no news so far. But now, all glyphs that have matching anchors will be attached by default when used as components in a compound glyph. In other words, if the base glyph has an anchor, e.g., connect, and the attached glyph has one with the same name, but prefixed with an underscore, _connect in our example.

    Careful though, attachment anchors are also used for generating glyph positioning features. E.g., top and bottom will cause the automatic creation of mark attachment code, exit and entry are used for cursive attachment in Arabic.

    If, however, you want to prevent Glyphs from generating the positioning code, you can now prefix the anchor name with a non-letter. A # works well, but emojis work just as well, so you can let your alignment anchors smile with 😀exit and 😀entry, or 💕top and _💕top. This is useful if you want to use these anchors for positioning components only, and save on the final file size by avoiding a bloated GPOS table.

Wait a minute. Did I say exit and entry for positioning components? You bet I did. Read on.

Sometimes, you need to align shapes, but can’t use normal alignment since it just won’t fit well enough. Now we have alignment anchors, too. Add an #exit anchor to the first and an #entry anchor to the second glyph. The component positioning works exactly like the cursive attachment for Urdu. Leave out the hashtag if you also want the cursive attachment feature code. What it does is move the second glyph to overlap the anchors, just like with the attachment described above. But then, it uses the spacing of the second glyph.

This is very useful for building in-strokes and out-strokes in Arabic letters and other connected scripts, but it can be used for anything you can think of, really.

Placed Image Handling

People who work with placed images will love this. As a tribute to our beloved Netscape Navigator (R.I.P.), we changed the way missing images are displayed. And as a side effect, we have gotten rid of those pesky error messages.

missingimage

 

Smart Filters

You want filters? We got filters! We’ve added eight new options for the Smart Filters in the sidebar of the Font tab. For instance, you can now filter based on annotations with Has Annotations, or for the presence of Bracket or Brace Layers, by choosing Has Special Layers. Or, find all glyphs that have manually placed hints with the Has Hints filter option.

smartfilters

Look closely, you can also filter for Category and Subcategory, or whether the glyph has customized glyph info (Has Custom glyph Info). For finding metric problems, you can also filter for glyphs that have auto-alignment in place (Is Auto-Aligned), and whether the metrics keys are out of sync.

OpenType Features

The figure features are calculated differently when a default set plus three of the four variants (.lf, .tf, .osf, .tosf) are present. In that case, Glyphs will not measure your figures anymore, but look at the existing figure suffixes to determine the style of the default figures.

And the building of the ornm (ornaments) is now failsafe: Glyphs checks for the presence of the bullet before it does anything.

The cvXX features (Character Variants) can now be automated. It is triggered when a glyph has a .cvXX suffix, where XX stands for figures between 00 and 99. But don’t get too excited about it, Character Variants are only supported by LateX at the moment.

And as always, there have been many small tweaks and improvements. Kerning in Southeast Asian scripts now ignores marks, for instance. And ccmp works much better now for Devanagari.

Language Support

Glyphs now speaks Chinese! The user interface now has both a simplified Chinese and a traditional Chinese localization. For the latter, we are very much indebted to the wonderful But Ko. Also, the Czech and Japanese localizations have received significant updates.

As for language support in fonts, the African N’Ko script can now be exported. And we have made significant improvements for Kannada, Devanagari, Khmer, Lao, Hangul, Malayalam and Myanmar. Many Glyph Info additions for Arabic: we have added many Unicode 8 and even some Unicode 9 Beta mappings. And Arabic feature generation works much better now. Many improvements for Chinese: We have added CNS1 mapping. And Japanese: improved Japan1 mapping, and accents should now work better with halfforms. Also, you can now kern between Han and Kana glyphs.

For a nice change in the Edit view, the shoulderHeight custom parameter in File > Font Info > Masters can now also be used for Hebrew glyphs.

You can now employ local Glyph Info files. Put your custom GlyphData.xml next to your .glyphs file, or in an Info folder, or in the parent folder. If Glyphs finds it in any of these places, the content will override the installed Glyph Info. This makes it much easier to share custom glyph data for a specific project.

Batch Editing

We made some tweaks to allow an even more streamlined workflow. For starters, you can now select and add multiple glyphs to your Edit tab via the File > Edit > Find… dialog (Cmd-F).

multiple-glyph-add

In the same dialog, you can now type multiple, space-separated search terms. E.g., searching for dieresis ss01 will find all glyphs that have both dieresis and ss01 in their name. Nifty.

And you can now add the same component to many glyphs at once. To do that, select the glyphs in Font view, choose Glyphs > Add Component… (Cmd-Shift-C), pick the glyph you want to add as component, and confirm the dialog. Voilà.

Custom Parameters

There are loads of new and improved custom parameters! Here is the quickest rundown we could do:

  • Master Background Color in File > Font Info > Masters, so you can better differentiate in which master you are when you’re switching between masters a lot.
  • Master Name overwrites the master name generated from the weight and width popups. The name will be visible in the tooltip above the master buttons at the top of the window.
  • Export Glyphs turns on non-exporting glyphs, or turns off exporting glyphs.
  • Remove Feature now also supports the GPOS features kern and dist.
  • Replace Feature allows custom kern features for every instance.
  • Update Features in instances to force the recalculation of automated features.
  • Write Kern Table will export the fully expanded kerning. You have to do your own subsetting though, so make sure that your kerning fits in the table.
  • Name Table Entry adds entries to the name table. The format is nameIDs;text where nameIDs are the same as in the name table syntax in feature files. Example: 4 3 1 1033;Blabla Sans
  • Disable Last Change can help with version control.
  • Has WWS Names sets bit 8 of the fsSelection value in the OS/2 table. If you don’t know what that means, please keep walking, nothing has happened.
  • makeOTF Argument if you know what you are doing.
  • unicodeRanges now also available in instances.
  • Post Table Type allows you to set the post table version.
  • TTFAutohint control instructions allows you to fine-tune your TT Autohinting.
  • And codePageRanges sets the Codepage Ranges. Careful, this can influence sorting in Adobe menus.

Better Importing

Glyphs now imports many more things, when you open an existing font. Most importantly, it now preserves the components in TrueType fonts. And it tries to recreate anchors when you import feature code that contains mark attachment.

Many special settings are imported as custom parameters: PANOSE values, hhea vertical metrics, and OS/2 winAscent and winDescent from CFF fonts.

When you import a .metrics file, and the values in the .metrics file disagree with the auto-alignment in the font, automatic alignment will be disabled for conflicting compound glyphs.

TrueType Improvements

People who work a lot with TrueType will appreciate that we updated the internal ttfautohint to version 1.5. What’s more, you can now add your control instructions as a Custom Parameter in File > Font Info > Instances.

If you do your own manual TrueType hinting, the TrueType tool now offers to preview Grayscale, DirectWrite, or ClearType. Not just the outline, but also a pixel preview:

tthinting

Switch between rendering styles and PPM sizes in the grey info box. Be warned, however, that the pixel renderings are just an approximation. The actual output in Windows applications may vary.

Also note that vertical distortions for Grayscale and DirectWrite are much smaller, outlines now snap to pixel fourths (Grayscale) or fifths (DW), respectively. This makes for a much smoother outline scaling, and less drastic jumps of horizontals between certain PPM sizes.

Plugins, Scripts & Python

In Glyphs 2.3, you can add aliases in your Plugins folder, very much like it has already been possible with Python scripts in the Scripts folder. You will still have to restart the app for newly installed plugins, but you don’t need to copy anything into the Plugins folder anymore. Also, Glyphs can see when an opened plugin is situated inside a git folder, and will offer to create that alias straight away:

git-install

If you find the current plugin installation situation too complicated, well, worry no more. Glyphs 2.3 now has a full-fledged Plugin Manager, accessible via Window > Plugin Manager! All plugin authors are invited to register their plugins, so users can find, install and uninstall their filters and reporters with a single click. And, the plugins are auto-updated to their latest versions at every app start. This should finally take care of the most frequent reply in support mails, ‘I already fixed that. Please make sure you have the latest version installed’. How cool is that!

pluginmanager

But when it comes to Python, we have saved the best thing for last: Yanone rewrote the Python API and the Plugin SDK. And he has done a phenomenal job, a big round of applause please.

It is now much, much, much easier to create a new plugin for Glyphs. Needless to say, this is our biggest change ever under the hood. So, make sure you have the latest versions of all your plugins.

And by the way, Yanone also cleaned up and reworked the application icon. Isn’t it a beauty?

glyphs-icon

We are so happy about it that we printed loads of little stickers with it. We always carry a bunch of them with us. So if you run into us, ask us for one.

Many Small Improvements

As always, the update sports literally hundreds of little improvements that will make a difference in your everyday type design experience.

For one thing, in the Preview area, Always Center Active Glyph is now an option. When activated, as you may have guessed, the selected glyph appears centered at all times, adding big gaps on either side if necessary. But if deactivated, Glyphs will try to fill the Preview area as well as possible, keeping the text flush left or right. To toggle between the settings, open the preview field by clicking on the eye icon next to Features in the left bottom corner of your Edit view. Then, right click to open the context menu and select Always Center Active Glyph. Voilà!

zweidrei6

You can now directly switch to a specific tab by pressing Cmd-Opt-1 through 9. That means that Cmd-Opt-1 always takes you back to the Font tab. Oh, all that precious lifetime saved!

Make kern exceptions without prior class kerning. Pan and zoom while the Annotations tool (A) is active. In Font view or Edit view, hold down the Option key to set the layer color, rather than the glyph color. Use the Transformations palette to also transform caps, corners, and align anchors. In the Layer palette, drag a layer copy on top of a master to use it as master. The instance preview at the bottom of the window shows more Filter and Prefilter custom parameters. Grids larger than 1 only apply to on-curves, while off-curves can move freely, so you can still place circles in a rigid grid. The mark cloud will now prefer .case accents for lowercase letters with ascenders, such as h or l.

Thank You

So, we have had quite a bunch of stability improvements and bug fixes, making this the most stable release of Glyphs ever. And therefore, we want to take the opportunity and thank all beta testers and forum members for their continued, well-informed feedback, for all the suggestions, and for all the crash reports that were sent to us. We are proud to have one of the most competent user bases on this planet. Thank you!

Sample Font: Sephora Sans by Mucca/Schriftlabor, and Amras Serif by Schriftlabor.

Writing Plug-ins

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Plug-ins provide additional features to software applications, usually provided by third parties. This tutorial provides you with an overview of how to go about plug-in development. You will find detailed descriptions in the Readme.md files on our GlyphsSDK repository.

Don’t be shy, grab a cup of great coffee, and relax: Others have done it before you.

1. Get Your Plug-in Template

We’re providing plug-in skeletons for various purposes (such as for file export, custom outline filters etc.) on our GitHub page. If you’re already familiar with Git, you may check out the folder structure in your favourite versioning app (Git’s own, or one of the many other apps available). Although being a Subversion client, Versions.app is the recommendation of this tutorial’s author).

If you’re too unfamiliar with the concept of code-versioning, even if it is just as a subscriber to someone else’s code, you can also simply download a ZIP file containing the entire Glyphs SDK (Software Development Kit) from the Glyphs SDK main page.

Pro tip: Get yourself comfortable with code versioning systems. You’ll benefit from them later in various fields of your work.

So, our SDK page is here: https://github.com/schriftgestalt/GlyphsSDK, and the plug-in templates are in a sub-folder called Python Templates. There you will find plug-in skeletons that are waiting to be brought to life by you. Each of these plug-in templates contains fully functional sample code for better understanding.

  • File format: Exporting your own font formats
  • Filter without dialog: Change the font through a Filter menu or upon export
  • Filter with dialog: Same as above, with the use of a user interface dialog
  • General plug-in: No special purpose. We’ll see what happens
  • Palette: Add a palette view to the side bar
  • Reporter: Draw into the Edit View and Preview to illustrate features of your glyphs
  • Select Tool: Enhance the Select Tool with your own features

For Glyphs.app, plug-ins come in the form of the Mac’s so-called packages, and they need to be put into Glyphs’ Plugins folder located at ~/Library/Application Support/Glyphs/Plugins (~ stands for your user account’s home folder). Glyphs will put it there automatically if you open it by either dragging it on the app icon or double-clicking it. These packages look and behave like single files in the Finder, but they’re in fact folders, whose content you can access by right-clicking on such a package in the Finder and choosing Show package content.

This is how such a plug-in’s folder structure would look like. Your main code goes into the Contents/Resources/plugins.py file. Other noteworthy files are the Info.plist which holds various information about the plug-in and, in plugins with a dialog, the two .nib/.xib files that contain a user interface dialog view.

folderstructure

Many contemporary text editors will also open a whole folder at once, providing you with a tree view of files to edit in a side panel. So you can open the whole .glyphsFilter file package in your text editor at once:

textmate

Currently, the most popular text editors for this purpose are TextMate, SublimeText, and Atom.

2. Rename some ____Names____

The Python Templates page in our GitHub repository contains detailed information about how to set up the file structure in the plug-in. You will have to rename everything that contains quadruple underscores (such as ____PluginClassName____) in up to three of the files.

For the plug-in name, we are dealing with two different name variations:

  • ____PluginName____ is a human readable name that will show up in places such as the Plugins tab of Glyphs’ Preferences window. This name may contain spaces and Unicode characters.
  • ____PluginClassName____ is the machine-readable name of the Python class in your code and needs to be put into a few places. It needs to be unique. You can’t install two plug-ins next to each other that have the same class name. Although I wrote ‘machine-readable’, there is one interaction where the user of the plug-in will get to see this class name: calling filters through Custom Parameters upon file export. So make it a friendly and unique name. Only ASCII characters and no spaces allowed here. We recommend camelCaseNames.

A section in the Info.plist tells Glyphs where it finds updates to your plug-in, so it can notify users when their plug-in becomes outdated. For that to work, you need to put in a URL to an online Info.plist that contains the current version number. This could be a manually edited file, or it could be an automatically generated file, such as from an online shop, or it can be the very same Info.plist inside the downloadable plug-in.

In case you are using GitHub for distributing, the deep link to your Info.plist will be: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/*user*/*plugin*/master/*filename*/Contents/Info.plist. Replace *user* with your GitHub username, *plugin* with the name of the GitHub repository, and *filename* with the name of your plugin including its suffix, e.g., MyPlugin.glyphsFilter.

Now is a good time to read the details on the Python Templates page.

3. Dialogs with Interface Builder

Some plug-in types can open a dialog inside Glyphs.app:

filterwithdialog

Like all of the Glyphs application, we use Apple’s own Cocoa for creating dialogs, specifically the Interface Builder. For this, you need to install Apple’s Xcode, available free of charge in the AppStore. If you don’t have it yet, now would be a good time to find a high-speed internet connection, and start the download. It clocks in at a hefty four gigabytes.

In case you want to use Tal Leming’s Vanilla library instead, you will find useful information in the Readme files of all plug-ins with dialogs.

Your Python code and the Cocoa user interface communicate with each other using IBOutlets (your code talks to the user interface) and IBActions (the user interface talks to your code).

They get defined in the Python code as follows. IBOutlets are defined as class variables like this:

class CSVFileExport (FileFormatPlugin):
    textField = objc.IBOutlet() # A text field in the user interface

And IBActions are class methods, prefixed with @objc.IBAction:

    @objc.IBAction
    def buttonClicked_(self, sender):
        # do stuff when the button has been clicked

And this is what it is going to look like when you create a dialog in Xcode’s Interface Builder:

interfacebuilder

All necessary details are described on the Python Templates page. Go through the step-by-step guides, and you can cross the bridge when you get there.

4. Step-by-step guides

How to deal with each plug-in is described in detail on the respective plug-in’s Github page:

5. Plug-in Manager

Once you’re done, you can make your plug-in available for easy installation via Window > Plugin Manager in app versions 2.3 and later. To do that, simply make a pull request for the packages.plist file in the glyphs-packages repository. All you need to add in that file are these few lines:

{
    name = "PluginNameWithExtension.glyphsPlugin";
    url = "https://github.com/userName/repositoryName";
    description = "Single-line description. Careful: WITHOUT LINEBREAKS! Use \n instead.";
}

Entries must be separated by commas. So don’t forget a comma right after the closing curly brace } if another entry is following. (And on the previous line if you add your entry at the end.) The order of entries does not matter, the manager will sort all registered plug-ins alphabetically.

There are a few more options available for your entry, like specifying a screenshot, or a minimum or maximum version. Make sure you read the glyphs-packages readme for all details.

Congratulations

And that’s it! This should do to get you started with your Glyphs plug-in. If you get stuck somewhere, please feel free to ask questions on our Forum.

Written by Jan Gerner (Yanone), edited by Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer.

25–31 July 2016: Third Edition of Glíglifo

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Glíglifo is a 6-day intensive typography and type design course, held in Spanish, in the beautiful Zaragoza region in Spain. Seating is limited to 24 people, so be quick to sign up, provided you have a good command of the language, of course.

¿Qué es Glíglifo? Glíglifo es un evento tipográfico que, tras el éxito de las dos primeras ediciones con alumnos venidos de todo el mundo, tendrá lugar de nuevo en la medieval villa de Sos del Rey Católico (Zaragoza) del 25 al 31 de julio de 2015. Glíglifo es un curso intensivo y pasional, un retiro espiritual, una experiencia en la que los amantes de la letra aprenderemos a crear, sentir y diseñar un alfabeto.

Registration and all further info on the official Glíglifo website.

24–29 May 2016: Typofest 2016 in Bulgaria

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Don’t miss the third edition of Typofest in Bulgaria! Its program features a conference, exhibitions and workshops. The festival is the first and until now the only event of this kind in Bulgaria. The workshops will be held 24–26 May in Sofia, and 28–29 May, the main Typofest conference will be held in Plovdiv.

And for the last time, Rainer Erich will give a version of his infamous Font Gamification presentation. If you haven’t seen it yet, this is your very last chance. See you in Plovdiv!

Making Fonts with Glyphs

Glyphs developer Georg Seifert will demonstrate the superpowers of his font editor by building a quick font live on stage. En passant, Georg will show off some of the main features of the software. Live commenting and audience interaction by Georg’s associate Rainer Erich.

Gamification of Fonts

Can animations be put into fonts? And what about games? Learn the answer to these questions, and how Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan sparked the gamification of fonts, in this short and fun presentation. This presentation contains NO PREPARED SLIDES, all typing is done live.


7 June–6 July 2016: Type Design Workshop in Toronto

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Experienced Canadian type designer Kevin King, of Canada Type fame, will give a multipart, five-week type design workshop with Glyphs in Toronto. This is a unique chance to get started in type design, or finally reactivate that type project you had started years ago but never got around to finish. The Workshop will take place in the beautiful historic Coach House Press building, and you will even have the chance to create a letterpress specimen of your typeface!

Type Design at Coach House Press

  • When?

    June 6 through July 7,
    Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 6pm to 9pm
    except for the start and end days:
    Tuesday, June 7, 2016, all day
    Wednesday, July 6, 2016, all day

  • Who?

    Kevin King, Canada Type

  • Where?

    Coach House Press, Toronto

  • How much?

    CAD 390 if you register this week, otherwise CAD 460.

  • For whom?
  • Prerequisites

    Bring your MacBook with OS X 10.9 or later. Download and install the Glyphs 2.3 Trial. Workshop participants will receive an extended trial license at the workshop.

  • Links

    https://www.gdc.net/event/2016/05/10/3936

The course will begin with students learning and exploring the fundamentals of Roman calligraphy to understand the calligraphic stroke in the making letterforms, and to generate their own unique typeface ideas. Students will then learn and use the Glyphs software to draw, space, kern, and output their font files. Students will then create a specimen piece of their choosing to demonstrate their font design in use.

The workshop will consist of interactive lectures and demonstrations of calligraphy, hand-lettering, and the Glyphs software. No previous knowledge or experience in calligraphy or font design is required. Participants will explore calligraphy and hand-lettering to understand the creation of letterforms, and will be encouraged to explore different styles that appeal to them. Students will walk away from the course with a strong understanding of the Glyphs software and of professional OpenType fonts.

1–3 July 2016: Glyphs at 7CIT in Valencia, Spain

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¡Hola! Glyphs team member Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer will host two introductory Glyphs workshops at 7CIT a.k.a. 7º Congreso Internacional de Tipografía in the beautiful Spanish city of Valencia. If you are around, don’t miss it.

Introduction to Type Design with Glyphs

  • When?

    Wednesday, 29 June 2016

  • Who?

    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

  • Where?

    Escola d’Art i Superior de Disseny
    Pintor Domingo, 20
    46001 Valencia

  • How much?

    EUR 20

  • For whom?

    15 participants max
    No prior type deign experience required, some experience with Bézier-based vector drawing tools useful.

  • Prerequisites

    Bring your MacBook (OS X 10.9.5 or later), download and install the Glyphs trial from http://www.glyphsapp.com/buy

  • Links

We will start by sketching a letter and digitising it. Then, we will add some letters, export a font, and test it in InDesign. In the afternoon, we will add more letters to the font, space them, optimise them for the screen, but also add diacritics, and produce compound glyphs. At the end of the day, you will have a pretty good start for your first font.

Pixelfont Family

  • When?

    Thursday, 30 June 2016

  • Who?

    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

  • Where?

    Escola d’Art i Superior de Disseny
    Pintor Domingo, 20
    46001 Valencia

  • How much?

    EUR 20

  • For whom?

    30 participants max
    No prior type design experience required

  • Prerequisites

    Bring your MacBook (OS X 10.9.5 or later), and download and install the Glyphs trial from http://www.glyphsapp.com/buy

  • Links

In this fun workshop, we will create a pixel font in Glyphs, and with a trick, generate a whole font family from it, each with a different pixel shape. If you are quick, you can have a complete font at the end.

21–28 August 2016: TipoBrda August 2016

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Spend an intensive week of type design in Kaverljag, a tiny village in South of Slovenia! The summer edition of Tipo Brda 2016 will take place in late August. Don’t miss this chance to kickstart or finish your type design, and get valuable feedback from experienced typography teachers and type designers!

TipoBrda

  • When?

    Sunday 21 August through Sunday 28 August

  • Who?

    Lucijan Bratuš
    Domen Fras
    Marin Šantić

  • Where?

    Kaverljag
    Grintovec 33a, Šmarje, Slovenia

  • How much?

    EUR 280 (discounts available for TipoBrda members)

  • For whom?
  • Prerequisites

    If you wish to attend the digital track, bring a laptop with a font editor. We suggest Glyphs and Mac.

    Grab black fineliners, markers, pencils, pens, cutter, white-out, ruller, a sketchbook, … basicaly the gear you rely on most. The workshop organizers will provide transparent paper and other stationery along with already mentioned extra tools.

  • Links

    Official TipoBrda 2016 website

We are getting back to the roots this summer. The 30th workshop challenges us to take a look back in the year 1997, when everything enthusiastically began and turned into Tipo Brda by the time. We will do some research and experiments in letterforms as we did in our early days. Welcome all of you who want to design a type your way. You will be given all the support by experienced mentors prof. Lucijan Bratuš (ALUO) and assist. prof. Domen Fras (NTF). So take a challenge and join us to explore the type design at the most diverse methods you can imagine.

Participants can purchase a full Glyphs license at a discount.

30 September–7 October 2016: Serebro Nabora 2016, Moscow

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Glyphs is happy to be a sponsor at the Serebro Nabora Type Conference in Moscow. What’s more, Glyphs team member Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer is holding two full-day workshops.

Glyphs Introductory Workshop

  • When?

    Friday, 30 September 2016
    10.30–17.00 (incl. lunch break)

  • Who?

    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

  • Where?
  • How much?
  • For whom?
  • Prerequisites
  • Links

We will start by sketching a letter and digitising it. Then, we will add some letters, export a font, and test it in InDesign. In the afternoon, we will add more letters to the font, space them, optimise them for the screen, but also add diacritics, and produce compound glyphs. At the end of the day, you will have a pretty good start for your first font.

Glyphs Pro Workshop

  • When?

    Monday, 3 October 2016
    10.30–17.00 (incl. lunch break)

  • Who?

    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

  • Where?
  • How much?
  • For whom?
  • Prerequisites
    • Prior experience in type design required (the words OpenType and Multiple Master should not sound foreign to you) or the introductory workshop
    • Bring your MacBook (OS X 10.9.5 or later)
    • Download and install the Glyphs trial
    • Make sure you know your Admin password, because we will make some installations
  • Links

We will start with a monoline (open paths) design in Glyphs, and generate an OpenType font from it. By adding glyph variations, we will make Glyphs auto-generate OpenType features for us. We will expand the mono line to a single-axis Multiple Master set-up, making use of built-in features as well as third-party scripts and plugins.

26–29 September 2016: Love Letters Type Design Workshop in Brussels

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Do you want to create your own a typeface?

Whether you're a beginner or you already have an advanced type project, Love Letters invites you to participate to its typeface design workshop. During this workshop, you will analyse the principles of letter drawing based on classical and contemporary models and gain the fundamentals of the construction of letter-forms. Based on the needs of your personal project, special attention will be given to digital type design specifics such as vectorization, Bezier curves, letter spacing, kerning, interpolation and workflow. By the end of the workshop you will have made your own typeface!

Participants will receive an extended trial license for Glyphs, and can purchase a full license at a discount.

Love Letters

  • When?

    Monday 26 until Thursday 29 September
    9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

  • Who?

    Sébastien Sanfilippo

  • Where?

    La Villa Hermosa
    Rue de Laeken 101
    1000 Bruxelles

  • How much?

    EUR 310
    Students: EUR 160

  • For whom?
  • Prerequisites
  • Links

    Love Letters

Que vous soyez débutant ou que vous ayez déjà un projet avancé, Love-letters vous invite à participer à son workshop de création de caractères typographiques. Au cours du workshop, vous acquerrez les principes du dessin de lettres d'après l'analyse de modèles historiques et contemporains. Vous serez …

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