I find that MareroQ’s Gimp Custom Font tool, Font_to_Layers script, is very useful when taking an existing font and using all the layers created as a template to work on and produce a new font.

Sometimes, however, I like to build a custom font from scratch and so I developed a plugin, called Custom_Font_Layer_Names, more suited to my workflow. It may be of use to other font customisers.



The plugin dialog has four options which work with a custom font xcf file:
Option 1 re-orders the existing letter layers (more on this later);
Option 2 displays a list of the character layers as characters (ie space.png is shown as space) in a message box. You can easily check for missing layers or see which characters are available in a font without scrolling through all the layers.
Option 3 adds .png to all the single character layer names in the file. (I am too lazy to type all those extra .pngs when creating fonts from scratch so I leave them as a single character and use the filter to add the file extension letters for me.
Option 4 adds .png to all the single character path names that exist in the file.

More detail on the rational behind Option 1.

When creating a custom font from scratch I like to work on letter families that share common attributes of shape like the letters E and F or like punctuation marks such as full stops (periods) and colons. After creating the letters/characters I tend to re-order the layers so that I can check and make sure that none are (unintentionally) missing. The filter sorts the layers into a logical order which can then be checked with Option 2.

So my workflow goes:

Create characters in related attribute groups with single character layer names.
Create any paths with single character layer names, if required.

Run the filter with Option 3 and then Option 4.

Run the filter with Option 1 to reorder all the existing layers.

Finally run the filter with Option 2 to double check that there are no missing layers.

Option 1 layer order:
space.png should be the top layer – it is so easy to leave this layer out – so I placed it here.
Upper case letters (A-Z) if defined.
Lower case letters (a-z) if defined.
Numbers (0-9) if defined.
Basic maths characters if defined.
Punctuation characters if defined.
Any other keyboard characters defined.
Special characters (Pound Sterling sign, Copyright Sign, Registered Trademark sign) if defined.

Option 2 run with Blue_Gold Custom Font before re-ordering.

Option 2 run with Blue_Gold Custom Font after re-ordering.

Not a lot of difference with this existing custom font - but note the space is now the first item in the list.

Thank you very much, Skinnyhouse for your contribution to our Gimp Custom Fonts! I have not had time to do any recently but I will certainly try your script when I do my next one. Thank you again!