Pull glyph free text from UFO source files

[chrissimpkins]

Free text strings can be stored in UFO source at the glyph level. These are used to annotate Unicode code positions by design teams for documentation to self and to others in collaborative project workflows.

These data are maintained in UFO source *.glif files with the following format (free text entered on this glyph is "this is a note"):

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<glyph name="A" format="2">
    <advance width="668"/>
    <unicode hex="0041"/>
    <note>
This is a note
     </note>
</glyph>

The UFO 3 spec for the note field of the *.glif file is located at http://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo3/glyphs/glif/#note. There is no specified structure or encoding requirements for the field in UFO 3 source.

TODO:

• [x] How to pull these strings from UFO source by glyph with fontTools.ufoLib?
• [ ] Is it possible to add different glyph notes by design layer?
• [ ] If so, is this something that is of use / commonly used in design workflows?
• [ ] What are examples of “typical” free text entered into these glyph-specific documentation?
• [ ] Develop spec for uniform approach to free text data (at least some part of free text) that permits parsing free text for informative data analysis, reporting back to design teams and other stakeholders
• [X] Does this exist in GlyphsApp -> *.glyphs source? Yes! (https://github.com/mekkablue/NotePalettes)

[chrissimpkins]

Added Python script with example of glyph-specific data reads using fontTools.ufoLib.glifLib library in

https://github.com/inkwork/gs-proposal/blob/master/src/python/ufo-glyphdata-pull.py

The note free text that is entered in the editor is parsed to a Py3 Unicode str or None if it is not present on the glyph