Guidelines: color and measurements

[ryan]

Couple of questions regarding FontParts x RF:

1. FontParts has a color argument in the appendGuideline() method. Doesn't seem to individually override color preferences in Robofont. Am I doing something wrong?

2. Robofont has a great feature that allows guides to Show Measurements. Any way to individually specify this when appending a guideline with Python?

TIA,
Ryan

[ryan]

Yes! Thanks @frederik & all :) Looking forward to it.

[tal]

@frederik Cool. This will be really useful. I have a smart guide extension that doesn't work so well because it adds/removes guidelines. It'll be much better with this new cloaking method.

[frederik]

a cloaking guideline device, cool!!

it is possible to set the alpha to zero, its not hidden but invisible

[tal]

Yay! Thanks Frederik! Can the alpha value be set to 0 to hide the guides? I could use that.

[gferreira]

guideline colors are coming in RF3.3b :)

g = CurrentGlyph()
g.appendGuideline((0, 100), 0)
g.appendGuideline((0, 200), 0, color=(1, 0, 0, 1))
g.appendGuideline((0, 300), 0, color=(0, 1, 0, 1))
g.appendGuideline((0, 400), 0, color=(0, 0, 1, 1))

thanks @frederik !

[tal]

I'd really like guildeline colors. :)

[frederik]

so far RoboFont does not apply guide color while drawing the guideline, and maybe it should...

see the guideline spec

[ryan]

@gferreira

1 - Yeah I guess I'm just wondering what use the color attribute has in FontParts if it can't change individual guides in RF. In the case below, the yellow guideline color I set does not visually override my preferences, which specify blue. It stays blue, but the yellow value is still stored. Is it a non-visual marking system that one can use to categorize guides programmatically?

2 - Great, thanks! I was having difficulty finding this on FontParts, but now see that it's here on Robofont’s site.

[gferreira]

hi @ryan,

1. as far as I know, all local guides and all global guides have the same colors (defined in Preferences > Glyph View > Appearance).

2. you can turn on measurements by setting a guide’s showMeasurements attribute to True:

   glyph = CurrentGlyph()
   guide = glyph.appendGuideline((0, 200), 0)
   guide.showMeasurements = True