Posted by:
Beat2
About the "move control points tool": if you "show fewer points", you'll get to see "on-curve" points only. When moving these, VTT will try to keep the outline "smooth". Try e.g. on the right-most two "on-curve" points of an "o". Also, if you hit the "Esc" key before releasing the mouse button, VTT will undo the movement without using up the "undo-buffer", allowing to reject a change. This may come in handy if you need to tweak a glyph here and there, e.g. to match the two "o"s in a "%" or similar. (Notice, however, that VTT won't allow you to move control points if you're in pixel or grid-fit mode, or if the VTT talk contains commands that the visual interface doesn't understand, such as ASM. The move tool will be greyed out in these cases.)
Another feature that may come in handy is the possibility to add or remove control points while the glyph is already hinted. Adding a control point may be useful when there is no control point around to delta or similar. When adding or deleting a control point, a part of the control points get renumbered; that's how TrueType works. However, VTT will apply the required renumbering to the VTT talk etc. for it to be "in-sync" with the outline. This would be quite a nightmare to do by hand. (Notice, again, that in the same cases as above the insert and delete tool will be greyed out.)
If you're an avid programmer (as opposed to using the GUI), you may find it useful that VTT Talk allows to "nest" comments. Assume you have a section of VTT talk, and you'd like to temporarily disable it, such as to try an alternative variant. What I'd to in this case is to put that section in a comment. This will work even if this section contains comments already, i.e. unlike C, VTT Talk will allow you to "nest" comments within comments (within comments...). This works the same way in the new control program. (Notice, however, that comments cannot be nested if you program down at the TT level.)
Maybe other users remember other tricks or unusual ways to use VTT?
Beat
