Glyph sources list sort options menu button

[justvanrossum]

The current automatic sorting scheme for glyph sources in the glyph sources list is not great for use cases with many axes and relatively few sources (not many "corner masters").

Custom sorting would be a big a can of worms, given how the glyph source order is handled by various backends.

One idea is to have a column per axis, and the header would sort the sources by the values for that axis. This is doable, but a fairly big task.

I propose for now to implement three options, accessible with a menu button (like the "hamburger" in the Font Axes section in the same panel):

1. automatic sorting (default, current behavior)
2. no sorting (previous behavior, effectively showing the sources in creation order)
3. sort by source name (not ideal, but potentially allows the user to name things with a numeric prefix to control sorting)

hello @justvanrossum (continuing from the Fontra discord)

when working on a very large designspace (116! sources), the current automatic (unpredictable) sorting order makes it very hard to find a particular glyph source for editing — to the point where we can't really use the latest Fontra for editing, just for previewing. (that's why I asked about older releases being available for download; I could really use a version from before 2025-03-25 right now, for example :)

I think 2 (designspace order) or 3 (alphabetical order) would be preferable as the default sorting order for glyph sources.

thanks!

[justvanrossum]

I'll try to get this sorted soon, thanks for your feedback.

To nitpick: it's not unpredictable, in fact it's highly deterministic. It is however not the same as the order in the .designspace file, and I get your point about how that order should be able to lead. The "no sorting" option in the above would get you that result back.

[justvanrossum]

This has now been implemented. The "Glyph sources" item now has a little hamburger menu, with three sort options:

A new build will be available in a few minutes.

[justvanrossum]

(I last-minute changed the "No sorting" label to "Do not sort")

[justvanrossum]

There's a fresh Fontra Pak download available at https://fontra.xyz

hello Just, thank you very much for the quick fix.

I've just tested and the sorting options work fine. but there seems to be an issue with the labels:

(on macOS 13.7.1 + Brave browser)

let me know if you need help with testing… cheers!

update: labels also work fine after clearing the browser cache! thx