Does the RoboFont 4 Glyph View still have Rulers?

ArrowType

In RoboFont 3, at the bottom of the Glyph View window, the “Display” menu included the option for Rulers. These were useful as one way to quickly create guides.

In RoboFont 4, I don’t see the “Rulers” option in the Display menu, anymore. Is there a new way to activate them, or have they been intentionally left out?

I see that I can right-click for the option “Add Guideline,” which makes this less of a problem, but I do kind of like dragging guides from rulers, particularly because it makes it simple to add either horizontal or vertical guides. Though, to be fair, I don’t know if I’ve ever used Rulers for anything else, so I would probably be just as happy with another quick way to add vertical guides, if there is a new approach.

Thanks!

I can’t find Rulers in RF4:

Rulers are available in RF3:

frederik

thanks Stephen and Jan, great extensions!

ArrowType

To make this somewhat simpler for others, I have added the basic guide scripts to a basic repo:

https://github.com/arrowtype/rf-guides

ArrowType

@jansindl3r Thanks – I love this extension, use it all the time, and can confirm that it works great for me in RF4! But, of course, I only want to add a guideline between two points sometimes.

I also have a couple of simple scripts that add guidelines to the horizontal center of the current glyph, and the vertical center of the cap height. I am having trouble / unable to set up shortCut keys for these with the script shortcut syntax, though I’m not sure why...

# menuTitle : Add horizontal guide to cap-height center

"""
    Add horizontal guide in the middle of the current glyphs’s cap-height
"""

f = CurrentFont()
g = CurrentGlyph()

capCenter = f.info.capHeight / 2

g.appendGuideline((0,capCenter), 0,  name="capCenter")

# menuTitle : Add vertical guide to glyph center

"""
    Add vertical guide in the middle of the current Glyph’s width
"""

f = CurrentFont()
g = CurrentGlyph()

if f.info.italicAngle:
    italicAngle = f.info.italicAngle
else:
    italicAngle = 0

glyphCenter = g.width / 2

print(glyphCenter)

# account for italic angle
italicOffset = f.lib["com.typemytype.robofont.italicSlantOffset"]
if italicOffset:
    xPos = italicOffset
else:
    xPos = 0

# add the guideline
g.appendGuideline((glyphCenter + xPos, 0), 90+italicAngle)

It’s useful to show/hide measurements on guides:

# menuTitle : Toggle guide measurements
# shortCut  : command+shift+g

from mojo.UI import getDefault, setDefault, preferencesChanged

if getDefault("defaultGuidelineShowMeasurment") == 0:
    setDefault("defaultGuidelineShowMeasurment", 1)
else:
    setDefault("defaultGuidelineShowMeasurment", 0)

preferencesChanged()

@roberto-arista it sounds like a guide-adding extension is in active development, correct?

jansindl3r

I did this one some months ago. Don't know if it works in RF4 yet

https://github.com/jansindl3r/Add-segment-guideline

ArrowType

Okay, fair enough. I did only use them to add guidelines, so I can see the logic in removing them. But, an extension to improve guidelines sounds nice!

roberto arista

they have been intentionally left out :)
it is a lot of real estate for a rarely used feature!

to "verticalize" a guide, you can use the guidelines sheet: https://robofont.com/documentation/reference/workspace/glyph-editor/guidelines/?highlight=guidelines#guidelines-sheet

AFAIK an extension specifically developed for guidelines is in the making 😏

SOLVED Does the RoboFont 4 Glyph View still have Rulers?