How to access/ fix components order

Ramiro Espinoza · April 2017

Hi there,

I've recently been told that having masters with compatible components orders was important for the generation of variable fonts. Can you tell me how to access or check the orders of components in each glyph? I wasn't aware of this issue.

Thanks in advance.

Santiago Orozco · April 2017

In Robofont, within the inspector, components, the order in that list is the component order. Make sure you activate “display component indexes” in Glyph window.

Ben Kiel · April 2017

Also, Prepolator

Ramiro Espinoza · April 2017

@Ben Kiel Really? I've noticed of course Prepolator checked contours orders but not components order.

Ben Kiel · April 2017

@Ramiro Espinoza actually, I was wrong about Prepolator — I was pretty sure it did, but I'm not seeing it now.

PabloImpallari · April 2017

You can also inspect the .glyf files inside the .ufo in a text editor, or via scripting.
Components are stacked like this:

<outline><br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <component base="f"/><br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <component base="l" xOffset="290"/><br></outline>

John Hudson · April 2017

Also note, with regard to component order, that it is good practice in the case of precomposed diacritics for the base letter to be the first component. This has implications for inherited metrics.

Georg Seifert · April 2017

Glyphs.app can help in various ways to ensure compatible outlines/components. There is a tutorial about that, too: https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/multiple-masters-part-2-keeping-your-outlines-compatible

Benedikt Bramböck · April 2017

There is a handy command within fonttool’s varLib to check the contour and component structure of glyphs across multiple fonts:

fonttools varLib.interpolatable font1 font2 …$

How to access/ fix components order

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