glyphsLib v3.0.0: Now with better round-tripping between Glyphs.app source files and UFOs

Nikolaus Waxweiler

Hey everyone,
I just released a new version of glyphsLib, the glue layer used by e.g. fontmake to turn Glyphs.app source files into binaries.

The most important change is the command-line scripts glyphs2ufo and ufo2glyphs. My colleague Jany Belluz spent a few months improving glyphsLib to be more compatible and to allow our designers to use Glyphs in our UFO-based workflow and I now worked most of the necessary glue into the official library.

The idea is to be able to round-trip between Glyphs.app source files and UFOs with as much Glyphs.app metadata intact as possible, so that you get as few differences as possible (pointless differences in Git are a major source of head→desk incidents here). Sadly, there remain various but mostly harmless differences. We amend as we go. One notable absent feature is brace layers...

To install the library, do:

pip install glyphsLib

To use the scripts on the command-line, do:

# Generate master UFOs and Designspace file
glyphs2ufo Example.glyphs

# Go back
ufo2glyphs Example.designspace

# You can also combine single UFOs into a Glyphs source file.
ufo2glyphs Example-Regular.ufo Example-Bold.ufo

I'd love to know who else is primarily using UFOs but wants to include Glyphs.app in their workflow. How well do the scripts work for you?