Need of extremum points in decorative font

I have created decorative tube-like glyphs in Illustrator and copied them into Glyphs. Then added extreme points and reduced nodes (hours of work…). Now I still have a big amount of extremum points and a file size of 2.4 mb when exported as otf. A decorative font like this will be most likely used in big sizes so hinting is not really required, right? Should i remove unnecessary extremum points now to reduce the file size or are they still important for something?
Bildschirmfoto 2021-08-05 um 17.26.37

There are some single nodes you might be able to remove but that will not make a big difference. Such a font will always be quite big. Did you disable subroutines? You might like to reenable them. It might take some time to finish but might reduce the size quite a bit.

You don’t need hinting.

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You need to know this:

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Thank you very much. I guess you mean re-add the subroutines?
I think I now understand that the subroutines detect repeating segments and merge the data to reduce file size. That is perfect because the font consist entirely of repeating segments.

But with subroutines enabled I get this error message - clicking the cancel button seems not to do anything. Can I force the export with enabled subroutines?

Bildschirmfoto 2021-08-06 um 10.53.34

This is great! thank you very much.

In a complex font, disable subroutines.

Normally it is advisable to deactivate it. But if you really need a smaller file, it can make sense to enable it. Just be prepared to wait.

Missed this topic, but good to see it included in my weekly recap :wink: I’ve been struggling with large file sizes and the subroutines seem to help, even on mid-complex fontfiles it saves quite a bunch!

So I’m wondering: Can these work on colorfonts or isn’t it compatible with the data used for those? (I’ve tried it and ran into the following message, which stopped the entire export. Note: this is a COLR file. SVG works but it feels the subroutines are only decreasing the file size of the base glyph).

Subroutines are only supported in CFF outlines. So COLR font are benefiting from it.
You can add the ‘disable subroutines’ parameter and uncheck it. This will silence the warning.

Cheers, I previously just removed the entire parameter which brought in the message. Saves about 200kb for each COLR file so well worthwhile!

Let’s hope COLR will overtake SVG support for desktop apps sometime soon ;). (as those files are awfully bloated).

Keep the parameter but uncheck it. Otherwise you get the error again.