Episode 22: Custom Glyph Sets (VIDEO)
May 31st, 2006Written by Michael Murphy
Collect your custom characters into an easy-to-use set by using the Glyphs palette and a little-known feature explained in this episode. Whether you need quick access to dingbats, accented characters, fractions or any other special glyphs, you can keep them available in a palette rather than scrolling through font menus and remembering obscure keystrokes.
This episode is available in both the standard 672 x 450 format as well as an in an iPod-compatible format.
Great information
about the Glyph Palette - I have gone through the Character Palette
and used PopChar - never used the actual Glyph Palette… Thanks.
Thanks, Nina. I was curious as to whether
everyone else already knew about Glyph Sets (since I discovered it
only recently)…or if it would be too specific a function to have a
lot of appeal. Glad you liked it.?r?nPopChar, huh? Wow…that takes
me back. I loved that little utility. Sadly, when OS9 went, so did
PopChar.?r?nWhat’s great about Glyph Sets — and something PopChar
couldn’t do — is the ability to have characters to double-click on
that are not in the currently active font. It’s a great little place
to store many glyphs from many different typefaces.
Hi Michael - I use
Nina
PopChar?? X Version 2.1.2 and if I click a character, PopChar X
inserts it in the text document. It remembers the five most recently
inserted characters and displays them with a yellow background.?r?nI
can choose if I want “remember font/styled” or not.?r?nUntil I get
used to the custom Glyph Sets I’ll keep it, but I certainly like
InDesign to handle Glyphs “natively” without having to use another
utility/app.
I stand corrected. I guess I just
never bothered to check for new versions of those old OS9 utilities
when I made the switch.
Hey there Michael! Great videocast
as always. ?r?n?r?nWould like to add one tip re glyph sets; that as
soon as you rebuild ID’s preferences (a common troubleshooting
thing), you lose your glyph sets. ?r?n?r?nIt’s another reason to
keep back-ups of healthy ID prefs … I keep them in a folder (”v4
prefs backup”) one level above where the actual InDesign Defaults
(the prefs file) is stored. So instead of rebuilding prefs, I
copy/paste the back-up over, replacing the damaged file.?r?n?r?nDoing
so resurrects your glyph sets, along with any pref customization you
might have done.?r?n?r?nAM
Great tip, Anne-Marie. I did not
know that. Of course, if I find myself having to delete or re-build
preferences, I’m probably so miserable from whatever caused me to do
that I might not even notice that I lostt my glyphs.
Michael what a wonderful time saver this will be. Could you or maybe some has made available Glyphs sets one could copy/install (if that’s possible)?
You showed different sets in your glyphs palette and since I am a great admirer of your design, I would shamelessly emulate if that was allowed.
Thanks
Neil
Neil —
It would be great if that was possible, but as Anne-Marie mentioned in her comment above, glyph sets are stored in your preferences, and swapping a preference file between users is not a good idea. Also…the glyph set doesn’t store the fonts themselves, so a glyph set that contains font-specific glyphs that use typefaces you don’t have installed wouldn’t do you much good.
I need to incorporate custom glyphs in my next “table-ized” publication. Should I have someone design them and then incorporate them into InDesign? Right now I use PM7 for the body and QuarkXp for the Cover.
Frank — The only way for Glyphs to appear in the Glyph palette is if they are character in a typeface. Drawn objects (i.e. vector art from Illustrator) cannot be considered glyphs. For you to get custom designs into the Glyph palette, that vector art would have to be converted into a typeface using a font design software such as those available from FontLab. That custom font would then have to be loaded into your system as you would any other font. Then, and only then, can you access the custom characters with the Glyph panel.