5 Things you Probably Did Not Know About Your Edit Tool
Tutorial
by Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer
6 January 2013 Published on 7 June 2012
- 1. drag a path segment
- It’s not just nodes and handles you can drag, you can also grab any part of a curved segment to alter its curvature. Additionally, you can keep the option key pressed to preserve the angles of the surrounding handles. Sounds complicated, but it’s easy. Try it.
- 2. option-drag to constrain angles
- If you hold down the option key while pulling a handle, its angle will be preserved. By the way, the option key trick also works in combination with your arrow keys.
- 3. option-drag on-curve points to leave off-curves untouched
- When you drag a node, you also drag the handles next to it. In case you just want to reposition your on-curve point and leave the handles where they are, just keep your option key pressed. Comes in handy if you need to shift the extremum of a curve. Again, you don’t even need your mouse for that: this also works with your arrow keys.
- 4. ctrl-option-drag for nudging a path
- Every time you adjust a node’s position, you need to to adjust the surrounding off-curve handles. Keep your ctrl and option keys pressed (or simply add the ctrl key while you’re dragging) to let Glyphs automatically do those adjustments for you. This technique is called ‘nudging’.
- 5. option-drag to select components
- Does it bother you how the selection rectangle ignores components? Option-drag and it will select components too.
