The Metrics Workspace
Use Metrics mode to judge the drawing and its surrounding space without the detail of contour editing. The workspace brings sidebearings and advance widths onto the canvas and keeps a text string visible around the current glyph.
The Glyph Window in Metrics Mode
Click the Metrics tool in the Toolbar, or press M with the Glyph window in editing focus. This tool switches the window into Metrics mode; it has no floating sub-tool toolbox. Holding M activates the mode temporarily.
Metrics mode brings the glyph measurements above the text while keeping the active glyph’s sidebearings visible on the canvas.
In the Font window, typing M can select the m glyph instead. Use the Toolbar button there to open the selected glyphs in the metrics workspace. Whether that view appears as a tab or a separate window follows your workspace configuration.
Metrics and Kerning are the spacing contexts among the six modes introduced in Glyph Window Modes. Metrics mode emphasizes filled shapes and their spacing boundaries. Contour details are reduced according to the mode's view configuration, so you can concentrate on the rhythm of the displayed text.
Primary spacing instruments
The spacing controls are the vertical boundary lines and triangular handles around the glyphs. Show them through View > Metrics & Kerning > Spacing Controls or View spacing controls in the View panel.
Metrics mode makes these controls available for spacing edits even when spacing controls are locked against accidental movement in drawing modes. The current lock label is View > Lock > Spacing Controls. That canvas lock is separate from binding a sidebearing to its value and from rounding outline coordinates.
The Metrics Table is the other primary instrument. It lists metrics for the glyphs in the displayed string, with columns corresponding to glyph occurrences and rows for advance width, LSB, and RSB. The current glyph's column is emphasized. Show or hide it with View > Metrics Table or the table button in the Metrics property bar.
The table puts neighboring values beside the text they describe. Repeated occurrences of one glyph refer to the same glyph data; they are not independently spaced copies.
Complementary readouts
The Metrics property bar shows the current glyph's values and spacing controls. It is useful for checking which glyph will receive a change. The Glyph-state Contextual widget provides another on-canvas location for LSB, RSB, and width.
Open Window > Panels > Metrics for the font-wide view. Unlike the Metrics Table, which follows the current text string, this panel lists glyph metrics across the font. Use it to compare a group of glyphs or find a value without loading every glyph into the current string.
The Glyph panel also presents the current glyph's identity and metric values. These surfaces are views of the same font data, not separate copies of the spacing.
Supply a test string
Use View > Control Bars > Text Bar or the Content sidebar to enter the string against which you will judge fit. You can use ordinary characters, explicit glyph-name references, or the current-glyph repeater \@ in glyphtext.
The Pairs & Phrases panel provides predefined text collections. Select its Texts mode for running-text spacing samples and click a phrase to load it into the Glyph window. The panel also contains Latin and Cyrillic pair-oriented collections, ranked for kerning work; those are a different purpose from a neutral spacing test and are covered in Kerning Visually. Choose a sample whose context supports the spacing decision, or enter your own control string.
Remove display adjustments before spacing
Turn Apply kerning off while establishing default sidebearings. Otherwise the visible gap can include pair-specific adjustments and conceal the actual default fit.
Set Simulate horizontal tracking to 0 units. The field is available in the Content sidebar and in the Text/Metrics property bar when there is enough room. A nonzero value adds or subtracts uniform display spacing without changing the glyph metrics.
Both settings control the displayed sample. Turning kerning off does not delete stored pairs, and resetting simulated tracking does not rewrite widths. For multiline assessment, also check the leading simulation so that an artificial line gap does not distract from the comparison.
Navigation, Viewing, and Text Entry
The current glyph is the spacing target within the displayed sequence. With canvas focus in Metrics mode, Left and Right move to the previous and next glyph in the text. The [ and ] text-navigation shortcuts provide another route. Modifier-arrow combinations have metric-editing meanings, so release modifiers when you intend only to navigate.
Use the text-navigation commands to move between lines. Up/Down behavior can also depend on the smart-navigation preference and the available phrase list; it may step through phrases after traversing the current text. Use the menu commands when that preference makes a single-key action ambiguous.
Enter or replace the sample through the Text Bar or sidebar. Switching briefly to Text mode is another way to type directly into the sample; return to Metrics mode before using the spacing gestures. Replacing the text does not discard the font's spacing edits.
For an uncluttered assessment, with the canvas focused, press Esc to hide spacing controls, anchor clouds, and other overlays. Press Esc again or switch tools to restore the normal display. You can also use Metrics mode's basic and alternative view configurations to retain a detailed and a cleaner display. Check the A/B state if the table or a widget is unexpectedly hidden.
Judge spacing at useful text sizes as well as at a close zoom. Actual Text Size shows the sample at its set point size; canvas zoom is a separate magnification control. If a shortcut differs on your setup, check the shortcut shown in the menu and your customized shortcut assignments before using it for an edit; see Commands and Shortcuts and the Commands & Shortcuts reference.