The points defining the outlines are placed on a grid, and the Grid Spacing defines how the coordinates of the points are rounded. The default value of a grid spacing of 1 rounds points to font units. For example, (3.142, 7.816) is rounded to (3, 7). A value of 5 rounds points to the nearest factor of 5; consequently (3.142, 7.816) is now rounded to (5, 10). Finally, a value of 0 does not round points and maintains (3.142, 7.816) as it is.
Contrary to popular belief, decimal coordinates can be exported into CFF-flavor (PostScript) fonts.
Disabling rounding can be helpful for highly detailed designs such as ornaments or when glyphs are scaled to a new size. Higher values are useful in coarse designs such as pixel fonts.
All tools and modifications snap to the grid. Choose Path → Round Coordinates to round all selected points to the grid.
Use a Subdivision value above 1 to offer finer control while keeping a large grid spacing for the design coordinates. For example, a Grid Spacing of 100 and a Subdivision of 5 places points on a 20 unit subgrid. A default Grid Spacing of 1 with a Subdivision of 10 gives point coordinates one decimal point, such as (3.1, 7.8).
Many places in Glyphs allow modifying values with the arrow keys. For example, points can be moved in Edit View, or numeric values in text fields can be incremented and decremented using the Up and Down arrow keys. Values are modified by 10 units when holding down the Shift key and by 100 units when holding down the Command key. Adjust the Shift and Command values as desired.
This option prevents the automatic replacement of glyph names. This might be of importance where special workflow requirements apply. The option is set in all fonts imported from OTF files and UFOs that are opened with Glyphs for the first time. Deactivating this option does not immediately activate the automatic replacement of names. To activate the automatic naming, pick Font > Update Glyph Info. Attention: this may also invalidate the feature code.
This option disables the automatic alignment of components and the automatic synchronization of metrics for composite glyphs such as diacritics. Lock the position of individual components by choosing Lock Component from the context menu in Edit View. Go to Glyphs → Settings… → User Settings → Disable Automatic Alignment for Imported Files for the setting of imported files
In Font view, glyph variations with name suffixes will stay next to the main glyph if this option is enabled. For example, ‘h.ss16’, ‘h.alt’, ‘h.loclENG’ will be displayed right after ‘h’ instead of being moved to a different category.
The format of a Glyphs file changed slightly from Glyphs 2 to Glyphs 3. For compatibility, Glyphs 3 can read and write the old Glyphs 2 file format.