Basic example of how to use the FontTools Recording Pen

fonttools-recording-pen-example.py

"""
    A basic example of how to open a UFO and print out the bezier curve values from a glyph.

    Example expanded from:
    https://fonttools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pens/recordingPen.html

    Requires FontTools and FontParts.
"""

from fontParts.fontshell import RFont as Font
from fontTools.pens.recordingPen import RecordingPen

# add a relative path to a UFO font
fontPath = "source/masters/Name_Sans-Display_Bold.ufo"

# open the font path as a font object
font = Font(fontPath)

# get a glyph object
glyph = font["a"]

# create a "pen" from the RecordingPen class - this is like an in-memory version of a drawing app’s pen tool
# the variable here would usually just be called "pen," but that can get confusing
virtualPenToDrawWith = RecordingPen()

# draw the glyph object into the pen object
glyph.draw(virtualPenToDrawWith) 

# print the value of the pen object
print(virtualPenToDrawWith.value)

This can be useful in the middle of a bigger script, e.g. to see whether points coordinates are rounded or not.

I’m placing this here because it’s easy to forget how to use pens.