Unitizer Plugin for Glyphs

This is a plugin for the Glyphs font editor. After installation, it will add the menu item View > Show Unitizer.

It's helpful for working in Unitized fonts. It display unit guidelines in the background (corresponding to a value that you can configure at will) of the current glyph in Edit view.

Unitized fonts?

Through history, type designers have used many different unit systems, for many different reasons.

For example:

• 1 unit, for Monospaced fonts
• 11 & 12 units, used by the IBM Executive Typewriter
• 18 units, used by Monotype
• 36 units, used by Lumitype
• 48 units, used by Berthold
• 54 units, used by many Photo-typesetting equipments and later Linotype
• 96 units, used by Later Monotype

In the age of digital font-editors we can use a 1000 units system. We have extreme liberty and that is a good thing, but sometimes it's useful to put some constraints to ourselves and adopt a more restrained scheme.

Whatever the unit system you want to work with, using this plugin all you have to do is to define the size of your unit and set a custom parameter, and you will get handy guidelines that will make your life easier.

If you want to learn more:

• Read about Benton's self spacing type
• Watch Matthew Carter's comments on unitization
• Read Frank E. Blokland’s research on unitization
• Frederic Goudy units

Installation

1. Download the complete ZIP file and unpack it, or clone the repository.
2. Double click the .glyphsReporter file. Confirm the dialog that appears in Glyphs.
3. Restart Glyphs

Usage Instructions

1. In Font Info > Masters add a custom parameter named unitizerUnit and set a value of your preference. (10, 12, 20 or whatever value you want your unit to be).
2. Open a glyph in Edit View.
3. Use View > Show Unitizer to toggle the display of guidelines, according to your unitizerUnit custom parameter value.
4. If the advance width of your current glyph does not fit in your unit scheme, the difference will be shown in red.

Requirements

The plugin works in the latest version of Glyphs.

License

Copyright 2016 Pablo Impallari (@impallari). Contributions by Simon Cozens (@simoncozens). Based on sample code by Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer (@mekkablue).

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

See the License file included in this repository for further details.