I’m working on a typeface that contains three widths (Semi-Condensed, Regular, & Semi-Extended), but only want to draw the numerals by hand in the Regular width while allowing the rest of the glyphs (very small character set, only an upper case alphabet) to be naturally interpolated between the masters at the end of the width spectrum that I’ve drawn by hand.
Below is a diagram (placeholder type as the live project is under NDA still) that hopefully explains what I’m trying to achieve:
I know I can use brace layers for the numbers, so if there’s no better alternative I know that’s my fall-back option, but compared to cycling naturally between masters, that’s a bit of a clunky workflow.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to set up masters so that the majority of glyphs in the middle master are interpolated while a select few can be drawn by hand? Any advice would be welcome!
I would just add the masters you need for the numerals, draw the other glyphs in your required masters and then re-interpolate them in the other masters. You can either do this manually by right-clicking on the layer in the layer panel and clicking “re-interpolate”, or write a two-line script that does this automatically.
The script solution sounds promising! I’ve gone through the Glyphs scripting tutorials, but a lot is still above my level of understanding. I was looking into the Glyphs Python API library and found info about instanceInterpolation, manualInterpolation, and other properties and functions that sound relevant, but unfortunately, have no idea how to practically execute the idea.
I’m guessing the simplest approach would be a snippet of code that could be run in the Macro panel? What code would you use to access the “re-interpolate” command?
No worries if you don’t know either, your suggestion was helpful regardless!
Why? I know what you can’t access them by cmd+1-9, but you still can cycle between all layers, including the brace layers. Use the “Previous/Next Layer” in View > Navigation. On a macBook keyboard it is Shift+Option+Fn+up/down arrow. On a big keyboard it is Shift+Option and two of the keys above the cursor keys.
Adding a full master only for a few glyphs can be more clunky. You have to also check the kerning.
