ShowMarkPreview

View > Show Mark Preview is a Glyphs.app plug-in for previewing mark-to-base and mark-to-mark attachment directly in Edit view.

Sample font shown: ‘Monkey’ by Ben Mitchell (@ohbendy), showing Thai and Burmese glyphs, with custom colors set in Font Info.

Installation

Please install the plugin via the built-in Plugin Manager, available via Window > Plugin Manager, and restart the application.

Usage Instructions

1. Activate View > Show Mark Preview.
2. Open an Edit tab with any number of letters and marks containing appropriate mark attachment anchors (e.g., top and _top, respectively).

The marks will be stacked onto all letters in the Edit tab, provided they have respective anchors.

Custom mkmk extension

If you are using special anchors to separate mkmk from mark positioning, you can define an anchor name extension by running the following command in Window > Macro Panel:

Glyphs.defaults["com.mekkablue.ShowMarkPreview.extension"] = "_MKMK"

Then the plug-in will prefer anchors with an _MKMK suffix for mark-to-mark positioning, e.g. _top_MKMK and top_MKMK. To reset to defaults again, run this command in Macro Window:

del Glyphs.defaults["com.mekkablue.ShowMarkPreview.extension"]

The setting is also available in the mekkablue script App > Set Hidden App Preferences.

Custom Colors

You can set font-specific custom colors with parameters in File > Font Info > Custom Parameters. Add these parameters properties:

• MarkPreviewColor: color for the marks in the currently active glyph in Edit view, defaults: 0.3, 0.0, 0.6, 0.4 (Light Mode), 0.8, 0.0, 1.0, 0.5 (Dark Mode).
• MarkPreviewColorInactive: color for the marks in all other (inactive) glyphs in Edit view, defaults: 0.15, 0.05, 0.3, 0.5 (Light Mode), 0.45, 0.15, 0.6, 0.6 (Dark Mode).

As values, take comma-separated values between 0.0 and 1.0 for R, G, B, and A. If you only want to override one of these values, simply add invalid values (e.g., x) for the ones you want to keep, or leave out trailing values you do not want to change. E.g., x, 0.3 will only change the G value to 30%, and leave R, B and A at their defaults.

Known Problems

• Unfortunately, I cannot disable the default mark cloud under all circumstances (yet).
• Typing new sidebearings in the grey glyph info box (View > Show Glyph Info) does not work when View > Show Mark Preview is on, at least in 2.5b (1072).

License

Copyright 2017 Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer (@mekkablue). Based on sample code by Georg Seifert (@schriftgestalt) and Jan Gerner (@yanone).

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

See the License file included in this repository for further details.