The Edit Menu — FontForge 20220308 documentation

# The Edit Menu

Undo

  In the outline view and the bitmap view this will undo the last command. The number of commands that may be undone for any glyph is controlled by the UndoDepth preference item.

  In the font and metrics views, this does NOT undo the last command. It undoes the last operation on all selected glyphs.

Redo

  In the outline view and the bitmap view this will redo the last command undone. Up to twelve commands may be redone (after that they get thrown away)

  In the font and metrics views, this does NOT undo the last command. It undoes the last operation on all selected glyphs.

Cut

  In the font view this command puts the foreground of all selected glyphs into the clipboard and then deletes them. Depending on the setting of Copy From it will either refer all glyphs (bitmap and outline) corresponding to this entry, or just the glyph being displayed.

  In the Outline View this will copy any selected points, References, or Images into the clipboard and then delete them. If a point is removed from a path then the path will be broken at there, see the Merge command for information on how to leave the path whole but without the point. (if there is no selection nothing happens)

  In the Bitmap View this will copy the selection into the clipboard and then delete it. If there is no selection nothing happens.

Copy

  In the font view this command puts the foreground and hints of all selected glyphs into the clipboard. Depending on the setting of Copy From it will either copy all glyphs (bitmap and outline) corresponding to this entry, or just the glyph being displayed. Normally it will not copy a glyph’s name, but if Copy From->Char Name is set then it will copy the name as well.

  In the Outline View this will copy any selected points, References, or Images into the clipboard. If there is no selection everything in the current layer will go into the clipboard.

  In the Bitmap View this will copy the selection into the clipboard, if there is no selection everything is copied.

  To external applications selected points (and associated contours) will be exported to the clipboard with format “image/eps”, while a selected image will be exported with formats “image/png” and “image/bmp”. If you Copy a series of glyphs into the clipboard, the only the first one will be exported to external applications. If the clipboard contains a single point, then this will also be exported in STRING format (giving the coordinates of the point); the intent is to make it easier to people to identify the point. See the section on selections

Copy Reference

  In the font view this command puts a reference to all selected glyphs into the clipboard.

  In the Outline and Bitmap Views this will copy a reference to the current glyph into the clipboard (only available in foreground mode).

Copy Lookup Data

  Copies lookup data (substitutions, ligatures, kerning, anchor points, etc) from the selected glyphs. This command does not work quite as expected:

  - The data are not actually copied. Instead fontforge makes a note of which glyphs it copied the data from. FontForge actually copies the data when the user does a Paste (so any changes in the lookup data will be pasted).

  - When the user does a Paste s/he will be prompted with a dialog asking what lookups should be copied.

Copy Width

  In the Font View this command copies the widths of all selected glyphs and stores them in the clipboard.

  In the Outline View this command copies the width of the current glyph and stores it in the clipboard.

  This command is not available in the Bitmap View.

Copy VWidth

  In the Font View this command copies the vertical widths of all selected glyphs and stores them in the clipboard.

  In the Outline View this command copies the vertical width of the current glyph and stores it in the clipboard.

  This command is not available in the Bitmap View.

Copy LBearing

  In the Font View this command copies the left side bearings of all selected glyphs and stores them in the clipboard.

  In the Outline View this command copies the left side bearing of the current glyph and stores it in the clipboard.

  This command is not available in the Bitmap View.

Copy RBearing

  In the Font View this command copies the right side bearings of all selected glyphs and stores them in the clipboard.

  In the Outline View this command copies the right side bearing of the current glyph and stores it in the clipboard.

  This command is not available in the Bitmap View.

Copy Grid Fit

  Only available in the outline glyph view and only if View->Show Grid Fit is selected. This will place a copy of the grid fit version of the glyph into the clipboard.

Paste

  In the Font View this command will paste whatever is in the clipboard into the foregrounds of all selected glyphs (exception: if the clipboard contains an image it will usually not go into the foreground), clearing out whatever was there. If there are more selected glyphs than there is information in the clipboard then the clipboard will be repeated until all selected glyphs have had something pasted in them (that is if glyphs A and B were selected when the copy happened and now glyphs C, D and E are selected, the C will get A, D will get B and E will also get A). If exactly one glyph is selected but the clipboard contains more that one glyph, the selection will be extended so that enough glyphs are selected that something may be pasted in each.

  If the clipboard contains outline information then that information will go into the glyph outline regardless of the setting of Copy From. If the clipboard contains a bitmap and the display is set to outline then the bitmap is pasted into the bitmap font it was copied from (ie. the one with the same pixel size), if the clipboard contains a bitmap and the display is set to a bitmap then the bitmap will be pasted into the currently displayed font. If the clipboard contains a bitmap of a size which does not exist in our database, then you will be asked if you want to create a bitmap font to put the bitmap into.

  In the Outline View this command will paste whatever is in the clipboard to the current editing layer.

  In the Bitmap View this command will flatten any floating selection and paste the contents of the clipboard into a new floating selection.

  If the clipboard is owned by an external application FontForge will attempt to Paste the following selection types (the bitmap view does not currently respond to external clipboards):

  "image/png", "image/bmp"

    background images

  "image/eps", "image/ps", "image/svg"

    as spline data

  See the section on selections

Paste Into

  Only available in the fontview. Just like Paste, except it does not clear the contents of the glyph before adding to it.

Paste After

  Only available in the fontview. Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the selected glyph, shifts it over by the advance width, and then adds the advance width of the glyph in the clip to this glyph. Essentially this makes it easy to build up words. (If the font has vertical metrics, then glyphs will be stacked vertically. If the glyph is right to left then the clipboard will be added on the left).

Same Glyph As

  Only available in the fontview. If the clipboard contains a single reference to a glyph then applying this command makes all selected encoding points refer to that same glyph. (For example the non-breaking-space glyph (U+00A0) frequently uses the same glyph as the space glyph. To accomplish this, select the space glyph, Copy Ref, select the non-breaking-space glyph and Same Glyph As).

  Adobe suggests that you avoid this. Use a reference instead. In some situations (I think pdf files is one) having one glyph with several encodings causes problems (Acrobat uses the glyph to back-map through the encoding to work out the unicode code point. But that will fail if a glyph has two unicode code points associated with it).

Clear

  Similar to Cut except it does not copy anything to the clipboard.

Clear Background

  Only in the font view. This command clears the backgrounds of all selected glyphs.

Merge

  This command is only available in the Outline View. If a point on a path is selected, the merge command will remove that point from the path and join the two points around the removed one with a new spline which approximates the curve between the two before. The two surrounding points will retain their slopes (unless both are corner points).

  How is this done?

Join

  This command is not available in the bitmap view. It looks for any paths with endpoints as the endpoints of other paths and then join those two paths. Also if the endpoint of a path is the same as the start point it will make that path into a loop. (The commands that move points around will normally do this automatically, but Paste will not).

  In the Outline view things are slightly more complicated: If any paths have selected points on them it will only attempt to join those paths.

Copy Fg To Bg

  This command is only available in the Outline and Font Views. It cleans out all the splines in the background layer and replaces them with a copy of all the splines in the foreground layer. Note: Any background images remain.

Copy Layer To Layer

  This command is only available in the Outline and Font Views. It brings up a dialog which lets you select a base layer to copy from and another layer to copy to. You may also choose to clear the destination layer, or to append to it. Then it copies the contents of the source layer (contours and references, but not images) to the destination layer.

Select

  In the outline view there is a select menu, other views just have Select All.

  Select All

    In the outline view it selects all points, all references (all images if the background is active) and the width line (and the vertical width line if that is enabled). In the fontview it selects all glyphs. In the bitmap view it selects the current bitmap region.

  Invert Selection

    Selects anything not selected, and deselects everything selected.

  Deselect All

    Deselects anything selected

  First Point

    Deselects everything and then selects the first point on the first path of the glyph.

  First Point, Next Contour

    Deselects everything and then selects the first point on the next contour. (If the last contour is selected then deselects everything).

  Next Point

    Deselects the current point and selects the next point.

  Prev Point

    Deselects the current point and selects the previous point

  Next Control Point

    Selects the “Next Control Point” of the current point.

  Prev Control Point

    Selects the “Prev Control Point” of the current point.

  Point At

    Allows the user to enter an X,Y coordinate and selects the point at that location.

  Points on Selected Contours

    If a contour contains any selected points, then select all points on the contour.

  Select All Points & Refs

    Just like select all, but it doesn’t select anchor points or the width lines.

  Select Anchors

    Select all the Anchor points in the glyph.

  (De)Select Width

    Toggles whether the width line is selected.

  (De)Select VWidth

    (if vertical metrics are enabled) Toggles whether the vertical width line is selected.

  Select Points Affected by Current HintMask

    if a single point with a hintmask is selected, then this command selects all points affected by that hintmask.

  Select by Color>

    Only in the font view. Displays a submenu containing a list of colors and allows you to select all glyphs which you have set to that color with the Char Info dlg. Normally the selection is cleared before setting the colored glyphs, but if you hold down the shift key the selection will be extended to the colored glyphs.

  Select by Wildcard...

    Select all glyphs that match the wildcard pattern specified. A glyph may also be mapped to more than one encoding slot. Select all encoding slots that refer to the named glyph. I think this is primarily useful for detaching .notdef.

  Select by Script...

    Allows you to specify an OpenType script tag and then ff will select all glyphs which have that script.

  In the fontview, the following menu items will have slightly different meanings depending on whether you are holding down the Shift of Control keys.

  If you hold down neither, then the current selection is cleared, and the selection is set to whatever the command specifies.

  If you hold down just the Shift key, then the current selection is retained and any glyphs specified by the command will be merged into that selection. (a logical or operation)

  If you hold down just the Control key, then any glyphs specified by the command will be removed from the selection.

  If you hold down both keys, then only glyphs specified in both the command and the old selection will be selected. (a logical and operation)

  Glyphs worth outputting

    Generally this means that either the glyph’s width has been set, or that in one of its foreground layers there is some data – a contour or a reference.

  with only references

    Select all glyphs which contain at least one reference (in the active layer) and no contours.

  Glyphs with only Splines

    Select all glyphs which contain at least one contour (in the active layer) and no references.

  Glyphs with both

    Select all glyphs in the active layer with both contours and references. This is something which cannot be expressed in a TrueType font, and fontforge has various tricks for dealing with it, but it might be something you’d like to fix up.

  Whitespace Glyphs

    Select all glyphs which contain neither references nor contours (but which have had their widths set).

  Changed

    Selects all changed glyphs

  Hinting Needed

    Selects all glyphs which FontForge thinks need to be hinted.

  Autohintable

    Selects all glyphs which FontForge thinks can be autohinted – ie. all glyphs not marked Hints->Don’t Autohint (this does not check whether ff thinks the glyphs in question NEED to be autohinted)

  Select By Lookup Subtable...

    Only in the font view. Brings up a dlg which allows you to select various glyphs depending on various advanced typographic features.

Find / Replace

  Only in the font view, this brings up a dialog that allows you to find patterns within glyphs and replace them with other patterns.

Replace With Reference

  Only in the font view, this command will search the font finding any glyph which contains an inline copy of one of the selected glyphs, and converts that copy into a reference to the appropriate glyph. In other words it finds things which should be references and makes them be.

  This is primarily for use after reading a postscript (type1, otf or cff) font. The reference information will usually be lost in these formats, and this command can find it again.

  Suppose the font contains a glyph “Acircumflex” which contains an embedded copy of “A” (a copy of the contours, not a references), then if you select “A” and apply this command it will search all glyphs in the font for something that looks like “A”, remove it from any glyphs in which it is found and replace it with a reference. It applies this same algorithm for all selected glyphs. If you want to check for every possibility, just select all glyphs first.

  After completion, the selection will be set to those glyphs which have been changed by the command.

Unlink Reference

  This will remove a referenced glyph and replace it with the splines and points (or bitmap raster) that make it up.

Copy From

  Only available in the Font View.

  All Fonts

    If this is set then Copy (and Cut and Clear) will copy from the outline font and from all the bitmap fonts

  Displayed Font

    If this is set then Copy will only copy from the font currently being displayed.

  Char Metadata

    Normally Copy does not copy the metadata (name, unicode encoding, comment, ligature info) associated with a glyph, but if this is checked then it will.

  TrueType Instructions

    Controls whether truetype instructions should be copied with a glyph. If copying glyphs from one font to another it may not be appropriate to copy the truetype instructions (which may depend on subroutines or values in the ‘fpgm’, ‘prep’ and ‘cvt ‘ tables).

  This also controls the behavior of the Transform and Build Accented glyph commands.

Remove Undoes

  Not available in the Metrics View. This allows you to free up some of the memory FontForge is currently squandering on keeping track of Undoes (and Redoes). Obviously this command cannot be undone.

  - In the Outline Glyph view this will free up all undoes/redoes in the current edit mode

  - In the Bitmap Glyph view this will free up all bitmap undoes/redoes

  - In the Font View this will free up all undoes/redoes in all selected glyphs, outline and bitmap, background and foreground.