Overview

A high-level introduction to hTools3.

Patterns

The toolkit is organized around 4 main contexts or scopes for performing tasks while working on fonts:

scope description
batch applying actions to multiple fonts at once
font modifying various types of font-level data
glyphs applying actions to the selected glyphs and/or the current glyph
glyph visualizing and modifying the current glyph

These patterns are used to organize the tools internally in the code library and externally in the menu.

The glyphs group is the most numerous one. Tools in this group are further subdivided based on the type of font data they manipulate.

Interface

The extension adds a hTools3 entry to the main application menu, from which all individual dialogs are accessible. Custom keyboard shortcuts can be assigned to any dialog using the RoboFont Preferences.

All dialogs in hTools3 inherit from the same base class and use the same interface and interaction defaults, which gives the toolkit a unified look and feel. Numerical input is done using a modified text input field which supports arrow keys and modifiers for increasing / decreasing the value interactively.

Tools which modify the current glyph offer an optional interactive preview. Some attributes of the preview can be adjusted in the preferences.