These options control the appearance details of glyph cells in the Font Window.
Each cell should have dimensions of…
Controls the default size of the glyph cells in all Font Windows. Note that when the local control area of the Font Window is placed at the bottom, you can use the
Increase/Decrease cell size buttons to temporarily change
the size of the glyph cells in the currently active font
Give each cell a
caption Shows/hides the caption of the glyph cell (the small rectangular bar shown at the top each glyph cell) and allows you to choose a font that should be used there
Show information
marks in glyph cells Shows/hides the small colored information marks in the corners of the glyph cells. Refer to the "Font Window" section for more information about their meaning
Show note icons Glyphs can have notes associated with them. With this option enabled, if a glyph includes a note, a small icon will appear in the corner of the glyph cell
Smooth glyph
thumbnails Turns on and off the anti-aliasing of the rendered glyph previews (thumbnails) in the glyph cells
Highlight conflicts between name and Unicode index
The default Unicode-Name mapping table (see pages 69 and 91) determines the “ideal” (recommended) mapping between glyph names and Unicodes. In your font, glyph names can be mapped to other Unicodes than those recommended, or glyph may have no Unicode codepoints assigned although they should. With this option enabled, FontLab Studio will show the caption background of the glyph cell in red color for all such problematic cases. To automatically correct the problem, use Glyph > Glyph Names > Generate Unicode.
Templates
This section regards two different sorts of templates used in FontLab Studio.
New font template: a .vfb file that can be used as basis for all new fonts
that are created in FontLab Studio. If you regularly create new fonts for the same foundry, you can save any of your fonts as a new font template. You may want to set an encoding, fill in the designer and vendor information but perhaps clean font naming and all the glyphs. Later, when creating new fonts in FontLab Studio, the new font template will be automatically opened so all the values that are specific to your foundry are already filled- in.
Glyph template images: the dark gray bitmap images that appear in
Font Window glyph cells if a glyph in the font is empty. The glyph template images can be used as an orientation during your type design process. For example, if you open a Western font, switch to the Unicodes mode and choose the Cyrillic range, you will see what your Cyrillic glyphs should roughly look like.
FontLab Studio 5 ships with a very extensive set of pre-installed default glyph template images. These are based on the Andale Mono WTG font (courtesy of Monotype Imaging, http://www.monotypeimaging.com/ ) and cover the entire Unicode 3.2 character set. Note that the default glyph template images are low-resolution, monospaced and in a “sanserif” style. They should not be used as direct source of information about the
Use template font to initialize new fonts
When enabled, allows you to choose any .vfb file as a new font template when the user chooses File > New. When disabled, a
blank .vfb file is created
Show glyph template images in empty cells
When enabled, glyph template images are shown in empty glyph cells. You can also choose if the default or a custom set of glyph template images is used. You can use any font installed on the system or a bitmap font file. For bitmap font files, .bdf files are supported as well as .dat files that can be created with BitFonter
Put glyph template images in
Background layer when creating new glyphs
When enabled, whenever you create a new glyph, the corresponding glyph template image will be placed as a bitmap in the Background layer.
Glyph Window
This section controls the behavior of the Glyph Window.
Editing behavior: Show meter panel when Meter tool is activated
If enabled, the Meter panel is shown when the user activates the Meter tool
Show crosshair
cursor If enabled, a crosshair cursor is shown whenever the user moves any nodes
Remove hints and guides by moving out of the window
When enabled, the user can remove hints and guidelines by moving them out of the window
Double-click on background to change its properties
When enabled, the user can double-click on the bitmap placed on the Background layer to position or scale it. When
disabled, this is only possible via Tools > Background > Move and Scale
Mask layer has its
own metrics When enabled, the Mask layer has its own advance width information. When disabled, the Mask layer always has the advance width of the Outline layer
Selection in the Glyph window is undoable
While editing a glyph, the user often selects some contours or nodes. With this option enabled, the step of selection is stored as a separate undo step so can be undone separately from other editing actions
Tap on Ctrl key
toggles Edit tool When enabled, the user can press the Tenable the Edit tool if a different tool is currently active, and AB key to temporarily press the TAB key again to revert back to that tool
Appearance options:
Small nodes Nodes may be small or large:
Node shape shows point and
connection type
When enabled, each node symbol will indicate both the type of the adjacent contour and the connection type. When disabled, each node symbol will only indicate the type of preceding contour while the connection type will be indicated with a separate small symbol next to the node.
Enable this option to see tangent points shown as such. Disable this option to revert to the FontLab 4.x behavior. Refer to the “Node Type” section of the “Glyph Window” chapter for more information about node symbols
Black/white nodes When disabled, node symbols are displayed using color as in
FontLab 3.x. When enabled, node symbols are displayed using color as in Fontographer
Show node position One node may be selected as the current node. It will be
highlighted and its position will appear on screen:
To deselect the node, click anywhere in the empty space of the editing field or click the ESC key
Node position is on
top of the outline Position of the node (see above) may appear below or above the path:
Highlight first node
of an open contour When this option is on, start and end nodes of the open contour are highlighted with a small diagonal cross:
Bezier control points are visible in selection
When this option is on and Show Layers>Control Vectors is
off, the control points become visible when the curve is selected:
Show selected nodes in inactive masters
When enabled, Multiple Master fonts will highlight selected nodes in all masters. When disabled, only selected nodes in the active master will be highlighted
Connect selected
nodes in all masters When this option is active, nodes that are selected in the current master are connected by straight line segments to nodes in all visible masters
Show anchor names When enabled, anchor names are displayed in the Glyph
Window. When disabled, they are only visible in the Properties panel
Show nodes on
mask layer When enabled, nodes on the mask layer will be shown even if the user is in the Outline layer
Show arrow on
closepath Activate this option to see small arrows on every closepath line:
Show measurement
Outline drawing options:
Smooth outline Allows one to select between non-anti-aliased and anti-aliased rendering of the outline:
Mask and inactive masters are smooth too
If enabled, the Mask layer and inactive masters in a MM font are also anti-aliased
Show contour
direction An outline consists of several contours and each contour is directional. The direction of the contour is marked with a small arrow:
Leave echo while
editing When editing contours the original contours shape/position is shown gray:
Fill open contours When this option is off, the open contour appears unfilled in
Advanced options: Move selected
nodes individually When enabled, the user can individually move nodes even if several nodes are selected. When disabled, all selected nodes move the same way
All BCPs are fixed When using non-node editing and you drag any location on a
curve, its control vectors may change direction. You can right- click on the node and enable Connection > Fixed to fix the
direction of the control vectors for that particular node. With the option All BCPs are fixed, you can fix the direction
of all control vectors in a font for the purposes of non-node editing
When curve is selected keyboard adjusts BCPs
When enabled, you can select a curve segment and use the arrow keys to move the BCPs
Align to all contour points if snap to contour is on
When disabled, View > Snap to Layers > Outline makes
nodes snap only to other nodes. When enabled, the nodes snap to all locations on a contour, not just nodes
Edit/Delete command breaks contour
When disabled, the Edit > Cut command breaks (opens) a
contour but Edit > Delete only removes nodes but leaves the
contour closed. When enabled, both Cut and Delete break the
contour
Keep smooth connection smooth at all times
Enable this to prevent smooth node connections to turn into sharp connections when blending is used
VectorPaint tools have separate view settings
With this option FontLab Studio will provide separate set of the view setting for the Vector Paint mode.
Dimensions
These settings control visual dimensions in the Glyph Window:
Visual ascender
and descender When you select 100% as the zoom value in the Glyph Window, FontLab Studio needs to choose a scaling factor to fit the font unit space in the Glyph Window. This is done by always fitting the Visual ascender is to the top of the Glyph Window and fitting the Visual descender to the bottom of the window. If you think that the 100% zoom level shows you a too small portion of your glyph (because for example your font has extremely long ascenders and descenders), you can increase these values. This is only a visual setting and does not modify and metric information in the font
Duplicate offset This setting controls the distance (in font units) by which outlines are duplicated
Copy/Paste offset This setting controls the distance (in font units) by which
outlines are moved when the user does copy-paste
Grid step This setting controls the grid step in font units. You can show/hide the grid and enable snapping to grid from the View
menu
Snap-to distance If any of the editing layers has the “snap-to” property turned on, moving a node will cause it to snap to the objects on that particular layer if the distance between the node and the object is not larger than the distance (in pixels) specified here.
Tip: Enabling “snap to grid” and increasing the snap-to
distance may be helpful when designing pixel fonts
Shift+arrow keys
Colors
In FontLab Studio, the color of practically each element of the Glyph Window can be customized – so for example, you can edit white outlines on a black background. You can also control the opacity of the control vectors here.
Tracking
Hints tracking When enabled and you move a hint by a distance less than the Tracking offset setting, all nodes that are on the hint will be moved with it. Use it to keep an outline on the hint when you modify the hint’s width
Guidelines tracking When enabled and you move a guideline by a distance less
than the Tracking offset setting, all nodes that are on the guideline will be moved with it
Track global
guidelines When enabled and you move a global guideline by a distance less than the Tracking offset setting, all nodes that are on the global guideline will be moved with it. Note: this may affect all glyphs in your font.