Drawing Glyphs

At a lower level, Ziafont can also draw individual glyphs. The glyph for a string character can be obtained from ziafont.font.Font.glyph(). Similar to ziafont.font.Text(), this method returns a Glyph object with methods for returning SVG as a string or as an SVG XML element.

font.glyph('D')

font.glyph('D').svgxml()

<Element 'svg' at 0x7ff1b0640770>

The above svg and svgxml methods both return the glyph in a standalone SVG. Often, however, the glyph should be added to an existing drawing or used elsewhere. The svgpath method returns the glyph as an SVG <path> element that can be inserted in an existing SVG. Alternatively, the svgsymbol method wraps the <path> in an SVG <symbol> element that can be reused multiple times in the same drawing.

Test Mode

To view the control points of a glyph path, use the test method:

font.glyph('p').test()

Notice how some glyphs can extend below the baseline (red). Additional glyph information can be displayed:

font.glyph('p').describe()

Index	83
Unicode	0070
Character	p
xmin	27
xmax	1145
ymin	-492
ymax	1118
Advance	1257

Glyph Indexes

The glyph index refers to its position within the font file, not necessarily the unicode representation of the character. The index for a given character in the font can be obtained:

font.glyphindex('&')

9

font.glyph_fromid(9)