Not able to select a certain variable font style (Microsoft Office: Word & Powerpoint)

Hallo, as the title said. I stumbled upon a strange bug (?).

I had a variable font with only 4 master being presence (ExLight, Black, ExLight Italic, and Black Italic) with no “Regular” master in-between, exported with these custom parameters below :

the strange thing is I cannot select one particular style. In this case, the style was ExtraLight Italic either via style menu dropdown or style linking shortcut, is it me adding some unnecessary parameter or just microsoft being silly as usual?.

Few additional notes:

  • I ran the Mekkablue’s script Read and Write STAT Axis Values (OTVAR) upon exporting.
  • The style linking and menu styles works on all Adobe apps (dunno if this is related or not about how the STAT table works :joy:)
  • I installed the fonts on fontbook via directly paste the font to ~/Library/fonts, and yes I use the Adobe fonts folder test too. Both not conducted at the same time.
  • Tested on microsoft office MacOS .

Few additional info:

Here’s the STAT table dump

<ttFont sfntVersion="\x00\x01\x00\x00" ttLibVersion="4.46">

  <STAT>
    <Version value="0x00010001"/>
    <DesignAxisRecordSize value="8"/>
    <!-- DesignAxisCount=2 -->
    <DesignAxisRecord>
      <Axis index="0">
        <AxisTag value="wght"/>
        <AxisNameID value="256"/>  <!-- Weight -->
        <AxisOrdering value="0"/>
      </Axis>
      <Axis index="1">
        <AxisTag value="ital"/>
        <AxisNameID value="257"/>  <!-- Italic -->
        <AxisOrdering value="1"/>
      </Axis>
    </DesignAxisRecord>
    <!-- AxisValueCount=8 -->
    <AxisValueArray>
      <AxisValue index="0" Format="1">
        <AxisIndex value="0"/>
        <Flags value="0"/>
        <ValueNameID value="17"/>  <!-- ExtraLight -->
        <Value value="200.0"/>
      </AxisValue>
      <AxisValue index="1" Format="3">
        <AxisIndex value="0"/>
        <Flags value="2"/>  <!-- ElidableAxisValueName -->
        <ValueNameID value="2"/>  <!-- Regular -->
        <Value value="400.0"/>
        <LinkedValue value="700.0"/>
      </AxisValue>
      <AxisValue index="2" Format="1">
        <AxisIndex value="0"/>
        <Flags value="0"/>
        <ValueNameID value="259"/>  <!-- Medium -->
        <Value value="500.0"/>
      </AxisValue>
      <AxisValue index="3" Format="1">
        <AxisIndex value="0"/>
        <Flags value="0"/>
        <ValueNameID value="261"/>  <!-- SemiBold -->
        <Value value="600.0"/>
      </AxisValue>
      <AxisValue index="4" Format="1">
        <AxisIndex value="0"/>
        <Flags value="0"/>
        <ValueNameID value="263"/>  <!-- Bold -->
        <Value value="700.0"/>
      </AxisValue>
      <AxisValue index="5" Format="1">
        <AxisIndex value="0"/>
        <Flags value="0"/>
        <ValueNameID value="265"/>  <!-- Black -->
        <Value value="900.0"/>
      </AxisValue>
      <AxisValue index="6" Format="3">
        <AxisIndex value="1"/>
        <Flags value="2"/>  <!-- ElidableAxisValueName -->
        <ValueNameID value="2"/>  <!-- Regular -->
        <Value value="0.0"/>
        <LinkedValue value="1.0"/>
      </AxisValue>
      <AxisValue index="7" Format="1">
        <AxisIndex value="1"/>
        <Flags value="0"/>
        <ValueNameID value="257"/>  <!-- Italic -->
        <Value value="1.0"/>
      </AxisValue>
    </AxisValueArray>
    <ElidedFallbackNameID value="2"/>  <!-- Regular -->
  </STAT>

</ttFont>

And last question unrelated to the issue above, why don’t glyphs style linked the italic values on the STAT table to the “Regular” name out of the box. Why link the italic to “Roman” ?.

Thanks!.

Why did you add all those properties?
Add the regular instances for each entry you like to show up. Those will populate the STAT and the fvar table.

The properties on general section I presume?

to comply with fontbakery check for several reasons, but I need to check again which properties done the job. Perhaps, could you pinpoint which properties should I remove ?.

Thanks for the response @GeorgSeifert !

I had another look. There are some settings that are redundant, but nothing that seems the be wrong (by looking at it). So I’m not sure what is wrong here. Maybe a good old font cache issue?

That looks like it?, haven’t ran the MacOs clear font script yet.

or is it the infamous 32 characters name limitation?, either of those obstacle I really need to reboot the system I guess.