Hi all, is it possible to make a variable straight to curve font using lines? I’ve made the font but have errors on export.
I used to tool on the bottom right to make the ends curved to straight, but this is where the issue is on export. Many thanks for any help!
This isn’t really possible, at least not the way you are trying to achieve it. This would require a lot of manual work.
You can try to set the stroke corner radius to 1 unit for your “straight” master, that might work.
What’s the easiest way to achieve this then? Not sure what you mean by 'set the stroke corner radius to 1 unit for your “straight” master
I was thinking to out line alll the letters then go and correct to straight but this seem pretty long winded (
Thanks!
Ah, sorry, I didn’t look at your screenshot properly. Indeed this won’t be possible simply with the stroke feature.
If you really want to make this work, you will need to make outlines manually. You can decompose the stroke and then add the necessary nodes to make the paths compatible.
yeah i thought that may be a case, shame it can’t just switch easily from 1 to the other.
Changing shape structure in interpolation is something pretty advanced and I would not recommend it for your first font. And just with the two shapes apart, it’s not clear how you are imagining the interpolation, i.e. what should happen exactly while you’re dragging the slider.
You can try experimenting with corner components. There’s a tutorial for them. They work on strokes two if you activate extra nodes. But it will be difficult to maintain compatibility in at least some cases.
If you want to “switch”, what’s the point of a variable axis?
Ah yes, Sebastian is right, that’s an important question. Do you want to interpolate from corner to rounding? Or just switch discretely from one to another? If the latter, it’s actually pretty easy and would just require some feature code if you want to implement it with a variable axis.
You need to decompose the strokes and prepare the outlines very carefully. It might be necessary to convert the outlines to TrueType to be able to precisely control the progression of the rounding.
yes, i wanted to interperloate the rounding.
What would be the method for to switch from one to the other. Sorry in advance if this is really basic stuff. Thanks
any pointers on doing the later?
Just export two instances: Sharp and Rounded. They are then available under the same family name.
Another option is to define a stylistic set that switches between the two styles, that way you can keep both in the same instance.
If you want to implement a switch within a variable font, you can either define an alternate layer (search for the Switching Shapes tutorial) for each glyph, or (the more manageable option) write OT feature code similar to a stylistic set, but enclosed in something like
#ifdef VARIABLE
condition 0 < AXIS;
sub A by A.round;
#endif
Note that AXIS
is the axis tag of your axis, capitalised if it’s a custom axis.
Great, that helps.
Thank you
If you not interpolate between the round and the sharp, I would just export individual fonts. Not much sense in putting two distinct sets of Glyphs into a variable font.