Warning, this is a mess and built for my workflow and zero consideration for yours.
self-guided tour:
on the left is a big multiline view
on the bottom is the text input - there is a control string input in front, it's a little buggy and i rarely use it - there is a barely functional metrics editor if you hover, i had big plans for this but rarely edit metrics like this so... (instead I use https://github.com/okay-type/GlyphviewMetricsHUD-robofontExt)
on the right is the control panel - it annoyingly changes color on mouse enter because i got bored - at the very bottom is a checkbox to autohide the menu - there are five sections of tools, which need more explanation on their own
Fonts This is a list of open ufos - drag to reorder (sometimes you need the widest at the top) - the checkbox toggles visibility (careful if the top font is hidden) - the crossing arrows reverses the sort order - the ghost button makes a hidden rFont that is an interpolation of the above/below ufos. it's fucking amazing if you keep the number of glyphs on display kind of short - the ghost font has a slider to set the interpolation value and an X to close the rFont - i'd like to add the ability do drag-drop ufos into the list and toggle their openness --- having a ufo open with noUI is much lighter and could let us preview / interpolate, but also a button to open a font as a font info sheet only, or the whole glyphview)
View Options Mostly self explanatory buttons and sliders - Max (lines) is very useful to keep the tool from getting bogged down - There are some logic conflicts between the "show as" and "separate" buttons... sorry
Manipulate Text "Useful" shortcuts to manipulate the input text or selected characters - I have a typo in the label - These buttons are kind of broken and need to be updated - The small-caps button assumes a '.sc' suffix
Word-o-matic This is my quick, stripped down rewrite of Nina's tool
Glyphs in Context This builds text strings based on the current or selected glyphs - uses a data file described below that needs work - the 'automatic' button is dangerous
to install:
set multiviewer.py as a startup script
there are two data folders:
dictionaries - this is from word-o-mat and is used by the language selection ... you can add your own like I did with redwings.txt or hoefler.txt
contexts - used by "glyphs in context". This is the oldest part of the dumb tool, similar to the hoefler test strings if you've seen those. A very messy collection of control strings for each character. For letters, I tried to get real words with initial, middle, double, and final positions. The extended latin samples are iffy (I made up more than a few), but better than HHŁHH. There are also very brief, very sloppy strings for symbols and punctuation. Reworking this feature is very high on my to-do list, esp. after hoefler helped me see the validity of this approach.
the 'trigger' files are keyboard shortcuts:
⌘ + ⬇︎ word-o-matic ⌘ + ⬆︎ tries to go back in the input text history (useful if you're mindlessly hitting the word-o button and go past something good) ⌘ + ➡︎ next preset input text ⌘ + ⬅︎ previous preset input text ⌘ + ⌥ + ⇧ + ⬇︎ glyphs in context