Masters without interpolation

Glyphs
1

If I need 2 masters, each assigned to a corresponding instance without interpolation, do I still need to use axes? I read the manuals and tutorials, but they all seem to refer to interpolation along axes, which I don’t need.

2

Here’s what you could try:

  1. In the Font Info (Command-I) > Font tab, add a custom Axis. Name it whatever you want with all caps for the 4-character name. Perhaps set it to Hidden.
    1. Also in the Font tab, add a Custom Parameter of Enforce Compatibility Check and then uncheck the right-most checkbox. This way, any differences in path compatibility won’t show up.
  2. In the Font Info (Command-I) > Masters tab, set a different value for that custom Axis in each Master.
  3. In the Font Info (Command-I) > Exports tab, select the + icon in the lower left to then Add Instance for each Master.

In the case of using a single Glyphs file for, say, a Music font for scoring and a Music Text font for text use, perhaps set up a Text font? Axis with the 4-letter TEXT. Then the Music font could have a value of 0 for it and the Music Text font would have 1.

Others might have additional suggestions. But, I believe the above should work unless something has changed or I’m forgetting a detail (or a simpler way to handle it). Hope that helps.

I used separate font files for the last project, but that was a special case where the Music Text font was only needed toward the end for frontmatter of the songbook.

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3

Yes, this is perfect. Thank you!

4

Axes are there in order to differentiate masters from each other. So even if you don’t want to interpolate, you need them in order to know which instance corresponds to which master.

You don’t need the “Enforce Compatibility Check” parameter, since compatibility is only flagged if the masters are used for interpolating an active instance. Since your instances sit cleanly on the master locations, Glyphs won’t report incompatibility anyway.

5

The default for Enforcing compatibility was change in Glyph 3. So the parameter is needed.

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