Hot Keys — FontForge 20251009 documentation

# Hot Keys

As noted in hotkey assignment you can nominate the hotkeys which you prefer for all items in any menu of FontForge. Some default hotkeys are shipped with FontForge so that you do not have to assign any keys yourself unless you want to make changes. The defaults are shown below:

Ctrl-A:

  Select All

Ctrl-Shift-A:

  Build Accented Glyph

Alt-Ctrl-A:

  Select All Points

Ctrl-B:

  Regenerate Bitmaps

Ctrl-Shift-B:

  Bitmaps Available

Ctrl-C:

  Copy

Ctrl-Shift-C:

  Copy Fg to Bg

Alt-Ctrl-C:

  Copy Lookup Data

Ctrl-D:

  Show/Hide Points

Ctrl-Shift-D:

  Correct Direction

Ctrl-E:

  Find Problems

Ctrl-Shift-E:

  Expand Stroke

Ctrl-F:

  Fit in Window

Ctrl-Shift-F:

  Font Info

Alt-Ctrl-F:

  Find / Replace

Alt-Ctrl-Shift-F:

  Replace With Reference

Ctrl-G:

  Copy Reference

Ctrl-Shift-G:

  Generate Fonts

Alt-Ctrl-G:

  Generate Mac Family

Ctrl-H:

  Open Outline

Ctrl-Shift-H:

  AutoHint

Alt-Ctrl-H:

  Review Hints

Ctrl-I:

  Get Info

Ctrl-Shift-I:

  Import

Alt-Ctrl-Shift-I:

  Glyph Info

Alt-Ctrl-I:

  Show Dependencies…

Ctrl-J:

  Open Bitmap

Ctrl-Shift-J:

  Join

Ctrl-K:

  Open Metrics

Ctrl-Shift-K:

  Auto Kern

Alt-Ctrl-Shift-K:

  Merge Feature Info

Ctrl-L:

  Set LBearing

Ctrl-Shift-L:

  Set Width

Ctrl-M:

  Merge Point

Ctrl-Shift-M:

  Simplify

Alt-Ctrl-Shift-M:

  Simplify More

Ctrl-N:

  New

Ctrl-O:

  Open

Ctrl-Shift-O:

  Remove Overlap

Ctrl-P:

  Print

Ctrl-Shift-P:

  Balance

Alt-Ctrl-P:

  Display

Ctrl-Q:

  Quit

Ctrl-Shift-Q:

  Close

Ctrl-R:

  Set RBearing

Ctrl-Shift-R:

  Revert File

Ctrl-Alt-R:

  Revert Glyph

Ctrl-S:

  Save

Ctrl-Shift-S:

  Save As

Ctrl-T:

  AutoInstr

Ctrl-Shift-T:

  AutoTrace

Ctrl-U:

  Unlink Reference

Ctrl-V:

  Paste

Ctrl-Shift-V:

  Paste Into

Ctrl-W:

  Copy Width

Ctrl-Shift-W:

  Auto Width

Ctrl-X:

  Cut

Ctrl-Shift-X:

  Add Extrema

Ctrl-Y:

  Redo

Ctrl-Shift-Y:

  Add Points Of Inflection

Ctrl-Z:

  Undo

Ctrl-Shift-Z:

  Harmonize

Ctrl-\:

  Transform

Ctrl-Shift-_:

  Round to Int

Ctrl-1:

  Make First

Alt-Ctrl-1:

  Invokes user script

Ctrl-2:

  24 pixel outline Curve Point

Ctrl-Shift-@:

  Average Points

Alt-Ctrl-2:

  Invokes user script

Ctrl-3:

  36 pixel outline Corner Point

Ctrl-Shift-#:

  Space Points

Alt-Ctrl-3:

  Invokes user script

Ctrl-4:

  48 pixel outline Tangent Point

Ctrl-5:

  Anti-Alias

Ctrl-Shift-%:

  32x8 cell window

Ctrl-6:

  Fit To Em

Ctrl-Shift-^:

  16x4 cell window

Ctrl-7:

  72 pixel outline

Ctrl-Shift-*:

  8x2 cell window

Ctrl-9:

  96 pixel outline

Ctrl-0:

  Add Anchor Point…

Ctrl-]:

  Next Glyph

Ctrl-Shift-}:

  Next Point

Ctrl-[:

  Prev Glyph

Ctrl-Shift-{:

  Prev Point

Ctrl-.:

  Execute Script

  Select First Point

Ctrl-Shift->:

  Goto

Alt-Ctrl-.:

  First Point, Next Contour

Ctrl-,:

  Select Point At

Ctrl-Shift-<:

  Find In Font View

Alt-Ctrl-,:

  Points on Selected Contours

Escape:

  Deselect All

Ctrl-Escape:

  Invert Selection

Backspace:

  Clear

Delete:

  Clear

Ctrl-=:

  Grid Fit Anti Alias

Ctrl-Shift-+:

  Bigger Pixel Size

  Bigger Point Size

Alt-Ctrl-Shift-+:

  Zoom In

Ctrl–:

  Smaller Pixel Size

  Smaller Point Size

Alt-Ctrl–:

  Zoom Out

Help:

  Help

F1:

  Help – Index

## Different Keyboards

The above descriptions assume you are using a keyboard for an IBM pc or compatible. But different keyboard vendors label their keys differently and different versions of X may map them differently.

I am aware of the following significant differences:

- On Mac OS/X the Option key is equivalent to the Alt modifier key

- On Suse PPC linux, the Command key is equivalent to the Alt modifier key

  (And the Option key acts as a compose key in the same way it does on the Mac when not using X)

- On Suns the meta (diamond) key is equivalent to the Alt modifier key.

FontForge will attempt to guess what keyboard you are using and produce menus with hot-key indicators that match the host machine. If you are displaying on a different machine from the one you are running on the menu names may be wrong. You can fix this up with the keyboard resource, or the -keyboard command line argument.

## Tool modifiers in the Outline Glyph Window

Pointer
  Shift:

    Constrain horizontal/vert or italic angle/45°

  Alt:

    Select control points before normal points

  Shift-Alt:

    Constrain control point motion to original angle from point

Magnify
  Shift:

    When dragging a magnification area, make it square

  Alt:

    Minify

Freehand
  Shift:

    Constrain horizontal/vert/45°

Scroll
  Shift:

    Constrain scroll either in single direction or by same amount in both directions

Add curve / Add corner / Add tangent
  Shift:

    Constrain horizontal/vert/45° from last point

Pen
  Shift:

    Constrain points h/v/45 from last point

    Constrain control points h/v/45 from point

Knife
  Shift:

    Constrain horizontal/vert/45°

Ruler
  Shift:

    Constrain measurement to one direction

  Alt:

    Give current position more accurately

Scale
  Shift:

    Constrain either to scale along x or y axis or scale both axes the same

Rotate
  Shift:

    Constrain rotation to a multiple of 45°

Rect/eclipse
  Shift:

    square/circle

Polygon/start
  Shift:

    Constrains so that one of the vertices is horizontal/vertical/45°

Flip / Skew / Perspective / 3D rotate

  N/A

## Modifier keys for arrow keys in the Outline Glyph Window

Ctrl / CapsLock:

  Makes the arrow keys scroll

Alt:

  Makes the arrow keys move by ten times as much as they would otherwise

## The menus

- File

- Edit

- Point

- Element

- Hints

- View

- Metrics

- CID

- MM

- Window

- Help

- Hot Keys

## Hotkeys

FontForge lets you assign custom hotkeys to the menus and other actions. Default hotkeys are provided for the menus in all windows which follow familiar key assignments such as Control+O to open a file and Control+c to “copy” something. The current hotkey for each menu item are shown in the menu itself to help you learn existing bindings and see if your modification to the bindings are as you expect.

The hotkey system allows you to customize the hotkey for anything that appears in the menus. You can freely change the hotkey for a menu item or add one if you find you are using a menu item frequently. Your settings for hotkeys are read from and stored in the ~/.FontForge/hotkeys file. In it’s most basic form this file is a sequence of lines of the form action:key. A large default hotkeys file is provided with FontForge in the hotkeys/default file.

The below fragment of ~/.FontForge/hotkeys will hopefully provide a nice example to get you started creating your own hotkey bindings. As you can see the action part starts with “CharView.Menu.”, meaning that this action is to invoke a menu on a specific window type. You can assign a different hotkey to the same menu item in two different window types. For example, the glyph window might have control+o to show font information, whereas the fontview might retain control+o to mean open a font.

The first action in the below file, Point.Tools.Ruler, will invoke the Ruler menu item which is in the Tools menu, which is itself in the Point top level menu of the charview window (Glyph window). Notice that the key does not need to have a qualifier such as control or alt. Having no modifier for a hotkey is currently limited to the glyph window.

    CharView.Menu.Point.Tools.Ruler: r
    CharView.Menu.Point.Tools.Pointer: v
    CharView.Menu.View.Show.Tab.Tab0: Ctrl+1
    CharView.Menu.View.Show.Tab.Tab1: Ctrl+2
    CharView.Menu.View.Zoom in: Shift++
    CharView.Menu.View.Zoom in: z
    CharView.Menu.View.Zoom in: =
    CharView.Menu.Point.Tools.HVCurve: 1
    +CharView.Menu.Point.Tools.G2: 1

Continuing down the list you see the use of Ctrl+1 to select a specific tab in the glyph window. This is followed by three key bindings, any of which will zoom the display to a higher magnification level.

When reading hotkeys files at startup, FontForge will first load many system defaults and then your ~/.FontForge/hotkeys file. Each file is processed from the first line to the last line. When reading these hotkey files, it might be the case that two or more lines have the exact same hotkey. For example, the system default is Control+o to open a file. You might like to override that hotkey to open the font info dialog instead. When FontForge is reading hotkeys files, if a hotkey is encountered that is already in use, the current action for that hotkey is replaced with the new action. So if you have the below line in your ~/.FontForge/hotkeys file then Control+o will open the font info dialog instead of trying to open a font.

    CharView.Menu.Element.Font Info...:Ctrl+o

If you want to add an action for a hotkey rather than replace the current action, prefix the line with a “+” character as the Tools.G2 line does in the above example. This allows the “1” key to invoke both the Tools.HVCurve and Tools.G2 menu items. In this case only one menu will perform a task depending on if spiro mode is active.

There are many modifiers that FontForge recognizes which are listed in the next paragraph. These are always the English name for the modifier regardless of your locale. The names are fully case insensitive; you can write Control, conTROL, or control and they will have the same effect. The non modifier key, for example ‘s’ without the quotes undergoes an internal case modification. If you specify control+S this will be interpreted as control being held while the ‘s’ key is pressed. If you are wanting the Shift key to be held too, you need to explicitly specify that as with control+shift+s as the key definition.

FontForge recognizes the following standard modifiers: Alt, Esc Ctl, Control, Ctrl, Shft, Shift, CapsLock, Opt (the last corresponds to the Option key on the mac keyboard, Cmd+ for the mac Command key Note: This can only be used by an X program if the X11 application does not appropriate it – this can be configured in the X11 Preferences).

Other than the CharView window type, there are FontView and MetricsView.