FontForge: Is it possible to reorder unicode slots for alternate characters?

Thomas Weakley

I have been creating alternates and ligatures in FontForge. I've been adding these unicode slots in no certain order. When the user opens the glyphs panel I'd like these alternate and ligatures to display in alphabetical order. Is this possible or is the order of these slots permanent? 

I don't have a global understanding of how software reads and orders unicode slots so this is a mystery to me. 

Thanks very much for your time!

screenshot for context: 

Thomas Weakley

I think I've figured this out, partially! I've found that as I program the ligatures and alternates they take on a different order in the glyphs panel in Creative Suite. It looks like the unencoded slots follow the slots of standard character they're associated with. Beyond that I'm not sure if the order the slots are displayed in is defined by the order in which they're programmed or the glyph name. Still trying to figure that out. 

Thomas Phinney

In a font, there are two orderings built in:
- encoding order (usually Unicode), which of course only applies to encoded glyphs
- glyph ID (GID) order, which is the actual order of glyphs in the font (alternatively, it can be CID order, which mostly applies to OpenType CFF CJK fonts).

In Creative Cloud apps with a Glyph Panel, you can actually pick which order you get. IIRC, Glyph ID used to be the default. Of course, even if you pick Unicode order, you will get unencoded glyphs (in GID order, I think) after the encoded glyphs.

Additionally, Creative Cloud Glyph Panels usually show alternates as pop-up alternatives for their base character, so they end up not being displayed separately.

Thomas Weakley

@Thomas Phinney Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge once again! It is much appreciated.