Here's a small script I wrote for renaming glyphs. It assumes Robofab is installed. You type in two list of glyph names--the current ones and the ones you'd like to replace them with. With your particular task, you'd probably have to run it three times--once to change your standard names to a temporary name (e.g., a.temp), once to change your alt glyphs to standard names, and once to change the temporarily named glyphs to the alt names. (Describing this sequence, it's apparent that it wouldn't be too hard to write a script that does it all in one run, but I have other things I'm supposed to be working on. Even so, it should still be faster than doing it manually.)

As for the class kerning, I'll assume you've created the kerning classes in FontLab's class panel. You could export your classes as a text file, do a round of search and replaces in a text editor (similar to the steps I described with the script), and then import the classes, replacing the existing ones. Note: the kerning will stay with the original glyphs, even when you rename them. Once you've done all this, rebuild the kern feature. There's probably an easier way to do this, but I've done it this way and it works.

Here's the script:

from robofab.world import CurrentFont, CurrentGlyph

f = CurrentFont()

tString = "a b c" # put your 'before' glyph list here
listOne = tString.split(" ")

tString = "a.1 b.1 c.1" # put your 'after' glyph list here
listTwo = tString.split(" ")

i = 0
while i < len(listOne):
	g = f[listOne[i]]
	g.name = listTwo[i]
	g.update()
	g.autoUnicodes()
	g.update()
	i = i+1
		
fl.UpdateFont()

print "All done."

Wonderful Mark! Many thanks. I've installed Robofab earlier, but haven't got the time to learn how to use it. This certainly gives good motivation to it.

Just one thing: what should be defined to listThree? Should there be a line that counts the number of items in the two other lists and puts that into listThree? Or did I misunderstood something? Also, I tried to make a lists of 19 glyphs, but FL macro window crops the end of the lines. That's no problem really, I can run the script in several passes.

It did cross my mind to TextWrangle the kerning (it's all in the OT kern feature), but it is still a lot of work. Can't python access that data in the same way it changes the names and unicodes?

Thanks, Mark!

Great! The script works now and it switches the glyphs like it should. I did also manage to build up longer lists. I'm not sure if the code swaps the unicodes like it should. The .alt glyphs in my font don't have unicode values at all. After running the script, the both switched glyphs have the same unicode value. If I understand your script correctly, it actually switches the names of the glyphs, and then based on that name, it adds a unicode value. Could these unnecessary unicodes result from the autoUnicode function?

Maybe after I study Python a bit more, I can find out about accessing the OT features and class data. Considering also about starting a new thread for that :)

Maybe clearing the unicode values before running autoUnicodes would ensure that existing values don't persist.

Here's a short script that swaps names and unicodes for any two selected glyphs in the font window:

#FLM: Swap Glyphs
"""Swaps two selected glyphs."""

f = fl.font
fIdx = fl.ifont

selGlyphs = [ f.glyphs[gIdx] for gIdx in range( len(f.glyphs) ) if fl.Selected(gIdx) ]
if len(selGlyphs) == 2:
  selGlyphs[0].name, selGlyphs[1].name = selGlyphs[1].name, selGlyphs[0].name
  selGlyphs[0].unicodes, selGlyphs[1].unicodes = selGlyphs[1].unicodes, selGlyphs[0].unicodes
  fl.UpdateFont(fIdx)

And yes, it is possible to access classes and features through python via fl.font.classes and fl.font.features, but those require further parsing to manipulate the data. It'd be nice to have a python method similar to the "Rename Glyph" tool in the Glyph menu, but that functionality seems to be absent from the python API.

Yeah, I have the same problem. I'm not sure if RoboFab is supported in 5.1 yet. Haven't had time to investigate.

BTW: I didn’t prove the script yet, but sounds awesome, so I’ll do it very soon. Thanks for sharing, Mark!

OK, so it seems that the main problem is only with 10.7. Thanks again Mark!

That probably means you weren't able to install RoboFab successfully.

I would suggest joining the RoboFab group ( http://groups.google.com/group/robofab ) and asking for help there.

Mark's script works pretty well in Robofont as well. If I wasn't busy I'd figure out how to update the character set sorting. This would be great if I could pair it with groups and a gui.

# Swap Lists of Glyphs
# Original version by Mark Simonson

f = CurrentFont()

tString = "A" # first glyph list
listOne = tString.split(" ")

tString = "B" # second glyph list
listTwo = tString.split(" ")

listTemp = [] 
for i in listOne:
	listTemp.append(i + ".temp")

l = len(listOne)

def setGlyphNames(listA, listB):
	i = 0
	while i < l:
		g = f[listA[i]]
		g.name = listB[i]
		g.update()
		g.autoUnicodes()
		g.update()
		i = i+1
		
setGlyphNames(listOne, listTemp) # a -> a.temp
setGlyphNames(listTwo, listOne)  # A -> a
setGlyphNames(listTemp, listTwo) # a.temp -> A

print 'Done! %d pairs of glyphs swapped.' % l

Many thanks to you too, gargoyle! But wait a second, doesn't the "Rename Glyph" -tool actually rename _ALL_ references to the glyphs including classes, kerning, opentype features? I could go one by one renaming my glyphs like this: S -> S.temp, S.alt -> S, S.temp -> S.alt. Shouldn't this do the job right? Ok, I have something like 40 glyphs per weight to switch but I could totally skip the TextWrangler. Now how come I never thought of the Rename Glyph -tool before. Duh!

Regarding the duplicate Unicode values when swapping with .alt or other non-coded glyphs— apparently Robofab’s autoUnicodes method doesn’t remove the value unless it finds a new one to substitute. Adding g.unicodes = [] above g.autoUnicodes() will prevent coded glyphs from keeping their old values after swapping names with non-coded glyphs.

As an exercise of my limited scripting abilities, I tried to extend my “Swap Two Selected Glyphs” macro to mimic Mark’s “Swap Lists of Glyphs”. This version is FontLab-only and does not require Robofab.

#FLM: Swap Two Glyph Lists
"""Swaps two sets of glyphs."""
# (based on Mark Simonson's "Swap List of Glyphs")

f = fl.font

listOne = "a b c" # <- put your first glyph list here
listTwo = "A B C" # <- put your second glyph list here

listOne, listTwo = listOne.split(" "), listTwo.split(" ")

if len(listOne) == len(listTwo):
	for i in range( len(listOne) ):
		g1 = f.glyphs[ f.FindGlyph( listOne[i] ) ]
		g2 = f.glyphs[ f.FindGlyph( listTwo[i] ) ]
		fl.SetUndo(g1.index)
		fl.SetUndo(g2.index)
		g1.name, g2.name = g2.name, g1.name
		g1.unicodes, g2.unicodes = g2.unicodes, g1.unicodes
	fl.UpdateFont()
	print 'Done! %d pairs of glyphs swapped.' % len(listOne)
else:
	print "Can't run. Lists are not equal."

g1.name, g2.name = g2.name, g1.name

That's clever--I didn't realize that kind of statement worked in that way. Could have saved all that nonsense with "listTemp" in my version.