Short of accessing the actual smart sort feature from script, is the only alternative using something like the following?

font.glyphOrder = ["a", "agrave", "b", "c"]  # etc

..and if so, is there a good default order I could import, so a user doesn't have to manage their list manually?

Thanks for any pointers!

I don’t know exactly how Smart Sort works internally. but the options under the Custom sorting mode are available from defcon’s UnicodeData object, which you can access with font.naked(). here’s an example:

font = CurrentFont()
newGlyphOrder = font.naked().unicodeData.sortGlyphNames(font.glyphOrder, sortDescriptors=[dict(type="unicode", ascending=True, allowPseudoUnicode=True)])
font.glyphOrder = newGlyphOrder

have a look at the different sorting options in the UnicodeData.sortGlyphNames documentation linked above, see if you can get the results you are looking for.

hope this helps. maybe @frederik has a better answer…

That was a super helpful suggestion, including the link to the defcon docs.

I find that for me, the cannedDesign sort type is seemingly identical to the "Smart Sort" option in Robofont, aside from deleting template glyphs.

Still, those are easy enough to re-add manually, and something I don't need to do every time (Add Glyphs -> Import from my "Latin 1" character set... -> then select to "add as template glyphs").

So, the script I'll use is very close to your suggestion, but I prefer this sort type:

font = CurrentFont()
newGlyphOrder = font.naked().unicodeData.sortGlyphNames(font.glyphOrder, sortDescriptors=[dict(type="cannedDesign", ascending=True, allowPseudoUnicode=True)])
font.glyphOrder = newGlyphOrder