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Glyphs apprently 'locked' not editable?

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 12:06 pm
by David Webber
I've encountered the situation a few times now where a glyph is 'locked'. The 'show contours', and 'show points' buttons are disabled, and editing the glyph is not possible.

I've been looking through the help for how to enable editing, but no luck so far.

How do I tell the program that I want to edit the glyph?

Dave

David Webber
Mozart Music Software

Re: Glyphs apprently 'locked' not editable?

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 12:32 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
You're probably viewing a composite glyph like À

Re: Glyphs apprently 'locked' not editable?

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 1:04 pm
by David Webber
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:You're probably viewing a composite glyph like À
Not as far as I know: the last one was the currency symbol. I copied it and pasted it into a new glyph, and couldn't select anything on the copy. (I want to remove the top left and bottom right 'ears', leaving bottom left and top right.)

Dave

Re: Glyphs apprently 'locked' not editable?

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 1:13 pm
by David Webber
David Webber wrote:
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:You're probably viewing a composite glyph like À
Not as far as I know: the last one was the currency symbol....
I may be mistaken. If I right click on the glyph window, and choose 'Glyph member properties' it does seem to indicate that this is a composite glyph. Surely it shouldn't be?

I'm going to have to learn more about composite glyphs, but any help in getting a non-composite version would be welcome!

Dave

Re: Glyphs apprently 'locked' not editable?

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 3:13 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
Click "Make Simple" on the Glyph toolbar, or from the Edit menu.

When copying glyphs from the glyph overview, don't open the Glyph Edit Window before pasting them. That creates a composite glyph.

Try it — select two glyphs, e.g. comma and period, open the semi colon, delete the contours, and paste the clipboard contents.

Re: Glyphs apprently 'locked' not editable?

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 3:57 pm
by David Webber
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:Click "Make Simple" on the Glyph toolbar, or from the Edit menu.
Thanks - that worked a treat.
When copying glyphs from the glyph overview, don't open the Glyph Edit Window before pasting them. That creates a composite glyph.
I hadn't realised that.
Try it — select two glyphs, e.g. comma and period, open the semi colon, delete the contours, and paste the clipboard contents.
Will do so. I've already pasted contours from one glyph into another quite a lot (using the glyph windows). For example to create a w with a "to bach" (Welsh for "small roof" or more to the point 'circumflex') I copy the w contour, paste it, copy the ^ contour from another letter, and paste that. [Welsh is the only language I know which puts a ^ on a w, but my son-in-law is a native speaker, and I therefore try to remember to put the w^ in all our fonts.] But creating a composite like this and using 'make simple' may be quicker.

In general I'm getting to like Font Creator more and more, the more I learn about it. My early efforts involved starting from bitmaps to create the characters, but as I try to develop musical symbols to match the style of alphabetic characters in different fonts (see 'Music Enhanced Text Fonts' in the discussion section of this board), I'm getting better at detailed glyph editing operations. (After much research I've finally discovered the (not completely obvious) W,Q short cuts for moving from one point to the next, which is making things much quicker.)

Dave

Re: Glyphs apprently 'locked' not editable?

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 4:07 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
David Webber wrote:For example to create a w with a "to bach" (Welsh for "small roof" or more to the point 'circumflex') I copy the w contour, paste it, copy the ^ contour from another letter, and paste that. [Welsh is the only language I know which puts a ^ on a w, but my son-in-law is a native speaker, and I therefore try to remember to put the w^ in all our fonts.] But creating a composite like this and using 'make simple' may be quicker.
Why make it simple at all? Use Complete Composites to make the ŵ and Ŵ, and leave them as they are. The Complete Composites feature¹ should position the accents correctly — if not, just adjust the position of the accent in the Composite Glyph to suit your design.

Later, if you change the design of the circumflex accent, all composites using it will change to match: âîôûŵ etc.

¹ Not available in the Home Edition of FontCreator. Copy/paste as explained above is the way to do this in the Home Edition.