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I use FontLab Studio, but if there are ways to do what I'm asking in Glyphs, I'd make the switch.

I know how to write OpenType features by hand, based on the naming-conventions of my glyphs and classes. And I've tried to expedite this lengthy process by copying features from another font, or loading them from a .fea files. But this only works if the name and number of the glyphs are the same, and even then the .otf file usually fails to export. I know there are such things as "Macros" in FontLab but I haven't used them before for lack of understanding.

So, is there a way to automate creation of OpenType features based on glyph and/or class names? Or to expedite this process with Macros or something else?

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Glyphs uses it's own elaborate glyph naming scheme, which is design to be more "human-readable" and is used to auto generate some OpenType features. For example:

  • You can create stylistic sets by using the suffix .ss01 for the first set, .ss02 for the second set etc.

  • You can create figure sets with the following suffixes: .tf for tabular lining, .tosf for tabular old-style, .lf for proportional lining and .osf for proportional old-style.

There are a number of tutorials on glyphsapp.com that explain more about the OpenType features and glyph naming in Glyphs:

A useful post about porting existing projects to Glyphs and the differences in workflow when moving to Glyphs:

Side note: I couldn't recomment Glyphs enough. The UI and workflow in general is a lot cleaner and more intuitive than most font editors, without sacrificing features.

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  • wow, thank you so much for such a quick and informative response! why do you say "some" features, though? What are the limitations? Are there opentype features that aren't available in Glyphs that are available in FontLab?
    – Moscarda
    May 28, 2016 at 18:22
  • PS, I had a quick read of "Porting to Glyphs" and am confused about whether or not it is better (for the auto-generation of feature code) to keep existing glyph names or not. Can you answer this for me?
    – Moscarda
    May 28, 2016 at 18:31
  • There are features that you can't auto-generate like this, you can still write the features manually though.
    – Cai
    May 28, 2016 at 18:40
  • Not sure about keeping existing glyph names when porting, I've never actually ported anything to glyphs only started fresh projects but there is an option for glyphs to try and convert the names for you
    – Cai
    May 28, 2016 at 18:41

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