Workflows

1. Draw the base letter and the mark as separate glyphs.
2. Put an anchor on the base where the mark belongs, and a matching one on the mark.
3. Open the accented glyph. Add both as components from the context menu.
4. The mark places itself from the anchors, and stays put when you edit the base.
5. Run Generate in the Features section to write the mark feature from those anchors.

See Components and Anchors and Feature Code.

1. With the pen tool, draw open paths down the middle of the strokes.
2. Select them, or select nothing to take the whole glyph.
3. Run Filter → Expand Stroke and type a weight.
4. Clean up with Remove Overlap and Correct Path Direction.

Keep the skeleton in a backup layer, and you can re-expand it at a different weight instead of redrawing.

See Paths and Filters.

1. Copy the UFO of an existing master and add it to the designspace as a new source.
2. Open the designspace. The new master appears in the Masters section.
3. Draw the extremes of the weight, then use the axis sliders to check what falls between.
4. Run Compare to find glyphs that no longer interpolate.
5. Where the middle is wrong but the ends are right, add an intermediate layer rather than another master.

See Masters and Interpolation and Checking a Font.

1. Set widths and sidebearings on the control characters first, using the bottom bar.
2. Use metric keys so related glyphs follow one another instead of being spaced twice.
3. Run Glyph → Update Metrics to apply every key.
4. Switch to the text tool and kern by dragging, in real words.
5. Put glyphs that kern alike into groups, so one value covers many pairs.
6. Audit the result in the Kerning section.

See Spacing and Kerning.

1. Name the positional forms by convention: beh.init, beh.medi, beh.fina, with beh as the isolated form.
2. Put entry and exit anchors on the joining edges.
3. Run Generate in the Features section. It writes init, medi, fina, and curs from those names and anchors.
4. Press Apply, then type words with the text tool and read them.
5. Run Glyph → Check Joining. It selects every form whose connecting stroke misses the font’s common band.
6. Use the Shaping section when a word comes out wrong: it shows which characters produced which glyphs.

See Text and Shaping.

1. Glyph → Place Image… puts a bitmap behind the glyph.
2. Glyph → Trace Image… converts it to contours. It is undoable.
3. Tidy the result: Optimize, then Add Extremes, then Correct Path Direction.

For a cleaner result, trace to get the shape and then redraw over it with the pen tool, using the image as a reference rather than as the outline.

See Glyphs.

1. Draw the masters and keep them compatible as you go.
2. Add instances at the positions the family should name.
3. Add avar mappings if the axis should not be linear in user space.
4. Run Compare and fix what it reports.
5. Export.

Runebender reloads files changed on disk, so a script and the editor can share a font.

1. Keep the editor open on the designspace.
2. Run your script over the UFO.
3. The editor picks up the change.

Keep the source in version control, so a script that goes wrong is one git checkout away from being undone.