Try typing in glyphnames preceded by a slash and followed by a space or another slash, or typing in hexadecimal Unicode numbers preceded by a backslash or “\u” and followed by a space, another backslash or a slash. Example:
01234\u20AC/dollar 56789
Adam

1. select letter cells in the big window
2. command-option-shift-m

For me the easiest way is giving myself a keyboard with the characters I want to work with. On the mac ukelele works well. You can then type fast and work fast (I am not using FontLab but there is no reason this should not work with FontLab).

For strings of characters that you want to use often in your metrics window, while kerning for instance, creating a textfile and loading that into the character window is helpful.

Best,
Artur

“This is giving me a headache...”

“Try typing in glyphnames preceded by a slash and followed by a space or another slash, or typing in hexadecimal Unicode numbers preceded by a backslash or “\u” and followed by a space, another backslash or a slash. Example:
01234\u20AC/dollar 56789”

Try placing you foot in your ear, and then wiggling your toes. With this method, you should be able to hear the crying multitudes.

Because FL is not capable of simply copying a glyph into the metric window, without the user diddling with invisible spaces, actual spaces and the confounded slash marks, the “next”, (cmmd-]), is the only truly headache-proof method. This is particularly slow when kerning large OT glyph sets, and so those who are serious, must carefully sequence the glyphs in their fonts. It’d be sweet if one could paste a glyph into the metric window’s glyph cells, as opposed to the text line, but that’d cause work somewhere. Amazingly, Fontographer succeeded into the post-256-glyph-limit world without a text line in the metrics window, but that success is a deep dark secret not to be revealed here. :)

Cheers!

@David: It’d be sweet if one could paste a glyph into the metric window’s glyph cells, as opposed to the text line, but that’d cause work somewhere.

Actually, you can, though the way it works is not very obvious (big surprise): Switch to the “text mode” in the Metrics window. Then you can copy glyphs from the Font window and paste them into the Metrics glyph display area (as opposed to the text line). You switch to “text mode” in the Metrics window using the button just before the “preview mode” button. Unfortunately, you need to switch back to “metrics mode” or “kerning mode” to make adjustments, so it’s not quite as seamless as the Fontographer implementation. Although it does allow you to insert a glyph when you paste, rather than replacing.

There is another way that is often simpler, and doesn’t require changing modes: Select a glyph (or range of glyphs) in the Font window and drag it (them) to the glyph area of the Metrics window. In this case, you can only insert, not replace. An insertion point will appear in the window to let you know where the glyph(s) will be inserted.