For some observers I need the decomposed, removeOverlaped glyph.

I have sort of a solution by adding duplicate glyphs to the font and decompose, removeOverlap them. And automatically remove them when the observer was removed.

But I know this can be done in a nicer way. But this code doesn't do the trick. But why not? Seems okay to me...

f = CurrentFont()

g = f['H']

temp = g.copy()
temp.decompose()
temp.removeOverlap()
for c in temp.components:
    print c #these must be gone...
drawGlyph(temp)

<Component for I>
<Component for I>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<untitled>", line 10, in <module>
  File "main.py", line 29, in drawGlyph
  File "lib/fontObjects/robofabWrapper.pyc", line 2736, in draw
  File "/Applications/RoboFont_Beta.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/defcon/objects/glyph.py", line 299, in draw
  File "/Applications/RoboFont_Beta.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/defcon/objects/glyph.py", line 308, in drawPoints
  File "/Applications/RoboFont_Beta.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/defcon/objects/component.py", line 107, in drawPoints
  File "/Applications/RoboFont_Beta.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/robofab/pens/adapterPens.py", line 111, in addComponent
  File "/Applications/RoboFont_Beta.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/fontTools/pens/basePen.py", line 166, in addComponent
TypeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute '__getitem__'</code>

Who can help?
Thanks! Thom

A copy has no parent anymore… so it cannot find the referenced glyph in a component. So decompose will not work.

Maybe the best option is to set the parent in the copied glyph:

source = CurrentGlyph()
g = source.copy()
g.setParent(source.getParent())

OK it draws. But still overlapped, and composed...

you could force it with:

g = CurrentGlyph()

copy = g.copy()

# get the internal font and set it hard in the internal glyph object, even it is a copy
copy.naked().setParent(g.naked().getParent())

copy.decompose()
copy.removeOverlap()

print copy.components