Hi. I’m looking for a way to give my font different line height for every weight.
unlike latin, It’s an actual requirement for arabic typefaces with a wide range of weights.
Any idea?
You can set independent values in Font Info > Instances as custom parameters, and what parameters necessary is up to which applications you need to support. But does it look good to a user when the font jumps up and down depending on the weight? I would personally set all instances with the same values to cover the largest area that the font can occupy.
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What parameters will help? I’ve tried typo metrics ( typoascender, typoDescender,…) and didn’t work. (Maybe I was wrong about this in the first place, and they’re not meant to do that at all)
I tried changing upm with custom parameter, but it doesn’t work for variable font.
And I should also say that it should work in every application, adobe, web, etc. we’re talking mission impossible here 
Oh sorry, I had missed the ‘variable’ part and withdraw my advice. The instance thing is irrelevant. Also the UPM doesn’t affect anything here, although UPM is relevant in variable fonts too in other aspects (it’s just not the right solution to your problem).
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So there is no solution but to give them all a same value?
By the way thank you for the answer 
Sorry I forgot to hit reply button again.
Variable fonts do support variable vertical metrics. But I didn’t see a compelling reason to implement it yet. Can you make a sketch what you try to accomplish?
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Thanks. I’ll send you a message with pictures from the font.
I was trying to implement different vertical metrics in a variable font, but never managed it to work the right way.
You can set different metrics in the instances though, and it will work as expected.
I was looking for a way to change the vertical metrics for intermediate instances (as in horizontal metrics on a width axis), however I couldn’t make it work.
I think that only works if text is set vertically, but I haven’t tried this yet, and therefor no idea if that would work as expected 
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I have also been working on a variable font for which a variable line height would have been very useful. The font is variable in x height but the leading doesn’t follow: when selecting the instance from high to low it always creates a big gap and leading has to be arranged manually.
Is this something that could be fixed?
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It definitely will not work in DTP apps because they do not base the line height on info inside the font. Why not solve this with width and weight axes and let it recalculate like in the fit-to-width examples on Axis Praxis: Axis-Praxis: OpenType variable fonts in the browser