Editing Glyphs

The editor is specimen-first. You normally type and navigate in the specimen strip, then double-click a specific character instance to edit its bitmap directly.

Text Mode And Edit Mode

  • Text mode is where you type specimen text and move the cursor.
  • Edit mode is where you draw into a single glyph.
  • `Esc` or `T` returns from edit mode to text mode.
  • The active glyph info panel follows the focused character instance.

Drawing Tools

The left rail carries the active editor tool state. Current drawing tools include select, pencil, brush, line, rectangle, oval, and fill, along with polarity, stroke size, tip shape, rotation, flip, and invert actions where they apply.

Tool controls are editor-window state, not global app defaults. Two editor windows can carry different active tools or scales at the same time.

Selections And Floating Marquees

The arrow tool handles selection work. A moved or pasted selection remains as a floating marquee so you can reposition it without clipping pixels prematurely.

  • `V` switches to the arrow tool.
  • `Enter` commits a floating marquee.
  • `Cmd/Ctrl+D` deselects the active marquee.
  • Selections can move outside the canvas and return later.

Bitmap Components

Glyphs can also reference other glyphs in the same font as bitmap components. Insert components from the Character menu, then use the arrow tool to select and move them as blocks.

  • Component pixels render as opaque blue above locally drawn pixels in the editor, with darker blue where component pixels overlap painted pixels, so you can see which pixels come from a referenced glyph.
  • The insert-component picker has live search, arrow-key navigation, and bitmap previews in palette order.
  • If the palette is the active window, Insert Component targets the current palette selection instead of the current edit glyph.
  • If several glyphs are selected in the palette while an editor window is active, Insert Component reuses that whole palette selection as the source component set.
  • When you add a decomposable character such as an accented Latin letter, the app now builds it from components by default if the needed source glyphs already exist in the current font.
  • The Character menu and component context menu can decompose selected components into local pixels when you need to break the reference.
  • Double-clicking a selected component inserts its source glyph beside the current glyph in the same editor window and switches edit focus to it.
  • Empty source glyphs still show a small placeholder box in the editor so the component can be selected and moved.
  • Changing font dimensions or metrics in Font Info preserves component instances instead of flattening or dropping them.

Palette Search And Bulk Character Actions

  • In the glyph palette, `Cmd/Ctrl+F` focuses the palette search field.
  • If the palette search field is already focused, `Cmd/Ctrl+F` falls back to the browser's normal page search.
  • The Character menu now includes `Nudge...` and `Adjust Metrics...` actions that work on either the current edit glyph or the current palette selection.

Glyph Metrics In The Editor

The editor can show vertical guides and uses the font’s shared metrics when previewing text. The info panel for the active glyph can also edit:

  • glyph width
  • left and right kerning values in context
  • left and right kerning group assignments

Kerning

Kerning is visible in both the specimen strip and the shared kerning window. The specimen view can also show overlap or underlap highlighting so you can see spacing changes directly in context.

The kerning model can store direct pairs plus group-based relationships. Current export behavior depends on the format: Playdate, UFO, and outline OTF can carry kerning, while formats such as Adafruit `GFXfont` cannot.

Kerning group assignments appear as lozenges in the glyph info overlay. Click a lozenge to edit the raw group name. Existing group names are suggested while typing, long names are shortened visually in the overlay, and invalid control characters or excessive length are cleaned before the name is stored.

The Kerning window has separate Pairs and Groups tabs. The Groups tab uses the same table style as the Pairs tab, shows each group side, and lets you edit group members inline. When a glyph already has concrete kerning and you assign it to a group for the first time, that existing kerning is copied to the equivalent group pair before the shadowed glyph-specific pair is removed.

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