I’m running into a couple of export problems I can’t find a solution to, probably due to my inexperience with Glyphs 3 (I used version 1, but that was long ago and this bit seems to have changed since then).
Let me start by explaining that I’ve made a font in both stencil and “unbroken” forms, by having a master for each in the same project. These have the same dimensions including weight, the only difference is whether or not there are gaps in the letters.
The first problem I run into, is turning these masters into instances in the Info window. When I use the + button at bottom left of the Exports tab, it always makes an instance for the master that is at the top of the list in the Masters tab — there doesn’t seem to be a way here of choosing which master I want to have an instance of. Trying “Add instance for each master” results in a warning that “The masters need different settings for weight, width, or custom values.” and no instances being made, but I can’t find where I would set any of these values. Not to mention that if I could find them, they would need the same values because the letters are supposed to be the same (other than the gaps).
The only way I can find to add an instance for each master is by rearranging the masters so the one I want an instance of, is at the top. What am I doing wrong here?
Secondly, when I try to export to a font file, nothing happens. I go through the export window, choose a folder to export to, and no .otf files appear there — but there is also no warning from Glyphs that it can’t make those files.
This, I can solve by adding an axis in the info window’s Font tab, where it doesn’t seem to matter at all what name I give it or what values I assign to it. All that appears to be necessary, is for there to be an axis defined. However, I don’t yet understand what these axes actually do, or how to use them, so I find it odd that I would have to add them manually if they’re required for exporting.
Furthermore, when I then look at the OTF files created by the export, both of them are of the same instance, rather than one stencil and one unbroken version of the font, despite them having the filenames for the two instances. After export, in the Exports tab of the Info window, the icons for the instances have changed to the same version, too, even though they were different before exporting. All of this, I suppose, goes back to my problem with creating instances from masters, but I’m stumped as to how and why …?
Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I’ve been struggling with this on and off for days.