Hello everyone,
I was wondering if, in a multiple master file with compressed and normal extremes, it would be possible to export the internal static variables (interpolated), such as condensed or narrow, without creating the masters themselves.
Instead of creating a single very large width-weight variable that includes from compressed to normal, I would like to create multiple weight variables for all widths present.
I hope I have explained myself correctly
Yes, this is possible. Glyphs only uses the masters internally; what gets exported are the instances. In your case, you can create instances for Condensed and Narrow, for example. These will be interpolated from the masters.
See the Handbook for details on interpolating instances from masters:
and for configuring instances:
Thank you Florian for the response, but I explained myself poorly.
What I meant was exporting variable fonts based on certain interpolated statics without having to create masters.
In the example I was making, if I have extremes compressed and normal both for width and for weight, I can create a variable font for weight and width that goes from one extreme to the other passing through condensed and narrow.
Instead, I was wondering if it was possible to export a variable excluding width axis and for only weight axis inside the extremes like condensed or for narrow without having to create specific masters.
The only way I know is to add the masters of the condensed and narrow, and then disable the masters I don’t need in order to export the individual variables
So you want a variable font where you can remove and limit the range of axes? Disable Masters is the main way of doing that, but if you have no masters at the new axis limits, then you can first create new masters from the instances, for example, Condensed or Narrow.
Glyphs can’t subset a font like this on the fly. But there are some tools that can subset a .ttf.
You can either look into the Slicer app: GitHub - source-foundry/Slice: An open-source, cross-platform GUI app to generate custom font design spaces from variable fonts
Or use fonttools, the variable font instances works really well.
Thank you so much Sebastian, Slice is perfect.
It does exactly what I needed in a fairly simple and fast way.
Thanks to everyone for the help.