Hide Screen Clutter

[PJMiller]

When adjusting curves I like to hide the rest of the clutter on the screen by pressing the 'H' key and using the arrow keys to adjust the point whilst looking at how it changes the character without all the other stuff getting in the way. Sometimes these adjustments are very subtle so I use the 'Ctrl' key.

The problem is that 'Ctrl H' turns the background shading of the character on and off and doesn't hide the clutter. In earlier versions of Font Creator it just didn't work at all, 'H' hid the clutter but 'Ctrl H' didn't seem to do anything.

It would be nice if there was an alternative key to hide the clutter as well as the 'H' key, something which didn't interfere with the function of the 'Ctrl' key in controling the step size.

I understand that this might be a problem because you are running out of keys which can be used for keyboard shortcuts and this is just a minor annoyance not something which interferes with the program functionality.

On both my laptop and desktop machines I have a programmable keypad beside my keyboard so the key which might be chosen as an alternative could be something really wierd and obscure and that would be OK for me.

Another alternative could be to make the keyboard shortcuts programmable in Font Creator. But I guess this would be a huge amount of work.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Try this undocumented trick. It is a bug that I asked Erwin not to fix, because it has a useful side-effect.

1. In points mode select the node that you want to adjust
2. Press Alt+H to show the help menu
3. Press Escape to hide the help menu and return focus to the glyph edit window. The node is still selected as you can tell from the hintline, but because the clutter is hidden you cannot see the selected nodes
4. Use the cursor keys to adjust the node, with Ctrl or Shift as you need
5. Use Q and W to move to the Previous/Next node to work on that.
6. Press H to show the clutter again

[PJMiller]

Thank you, that seeems to work quite well.

It is more keystrokes than I would have liked but they can all be put into a macro so that brings it down to one keystroke again.

[ClintGoss]

Very enlightening ... this has really improved the way I'm working now ...

[PJMiller]

It would still be nice if Erwin could make Ctrl+H hide the clutter and make the arrow keys move in small increments whilst it is pressed.

This small change would guarantee me getting an upgrade from 12 to 13, much more than the improvements for colour fonts.

[Erwin Denissen]

CTRL-H is already used to toggle Fill Outline, but we will implement this with SHIFT-H.

[Erwin Denissen]

We have just released the update.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Shortcut Shift+H now hides metrics and guides, and shortcut h shows them again.

[PJMiller]

Maybe it's time to update to version 13.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Maybe it's time to update to version 13.

FontCreator continues to improve. See my latest video.

FontCreator 13 What is New?

[PJMiller]

This is really good !

The 'hide clutter' feature works well as a toggle but using 'h' to cancel it whilst retaining it's original function as a momentary 'hide clutter' is a stroke of genius !

Well done !

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I edited the thread title so that it is easier to know what it is about.

Yes, frequently used features like this should be super-easy to use. The shortcuts to hide guides and metrics temporarily and toggle them work perfectly together.

I hope Erwin noticed my request for a shortcut to toggle zoom in the glyph edit window. That is something else one may do hundreds of time a day while editing contour outlines.