Combining masters in an instance

Glyphs
1

I have a family of fonts that are intended to work as different layers:
Master A
Master B
Master C
They all have the same character widths and kerning so that each can be used in a separate layer and everything aligns nicely.

They currently produce 3 corresponding instances:
Instance A
Instance B
Instance C

I would also like to generate additional instance which composite these:
Instance D = Masters A + B
Instance E = Masters A + C
Instance F = Masters A + B + C

Is there anyway to define these instances with custom parameters, or do I need to effectively copy/paste a lot of data to create corresponding masters D, E & F.

2

That depends on how the masters relate to each other. Are the masters compatible for interpolation?

3

It might be possible with a filter. And I have the feeling that someone had asked about this, before.

4

No, the masters are not compatible. The glyph shapes of master A are different from masters B & C, and the new instances will have portions of these disparate masters overlapping to create new shapes.

5

Could mekkablue’s Copy Layer to Layer script (with “keep target layer content” checked) be up to this?
(I mean to create new masters DEF, that is.)

1 Like
6

@eliason I had not used that script before, but trying it out I think I can make this work. Many thanks for pointing out this script!

7

It should be possible to put something similar to that script into a filter and run it on export. So you would not need the extra masters.

1 Like
8

I believe you have already created that:

However, it still does not work for Glyphs 3. Do you think an update could be made?