Hello all. I’ve created a simple stroke-based font (paths originally drawn in Illustrator then copied/pasted into Glyphs). I have my thinnest-weight master, a boldest weight master, and 5 instance weights—all of that works delightfully well within Glyphs. (Thanks to all your forum posters! Reading these posts has helped tremendously so far.) I can export my non-variable OTF fonts just fine, if I don’t enable Remove Overlaps. However…
If I attempt to export a variable font I encounter several “Incompatible outlines” errors.
If I attempt to export non-variable OTFs and select Remove Overlaps I again encounter many errors.
I’m fine with overlaps in theory; my font sort of requires them if there’s to be any hope of maintaining compatibility between masters. (In some glyphs as the stroke weight grows, lines can entirely obscure the negative space of the counter shapes, etc.) But I’m surprised that the VF export would get hung up on this. The masters for thinnest and boldest are exactly the same, aside from the stroke weights.
As for the non-variable OTFs, I was fine with exporting the overlaps until I noticed terrible artifacts in both Adobe Illustrator and Apple Font Book when viewed at smaller sizes. So this is where I’m stuck. I can create the fonts files, but they have bad artifacts at smaller sizes.
I must be missing some small, fundamental piece of knowledge that would get me out of this jam I’d very much appreciate some insight. Happy to share screen grabs, Glyph file, and what not. And thank you to the Glyphs app authors. Learning the app has been fun and I can feel how much effort must have gone into making something so complex feel rather simple and easy to use. Well done!
Here’s one of the glyphs I’m getting an error on. (Oddly, the A exports without any errors. But the D on the other hand…) Yes, there is definitely overlap—but shouldn’t that be ok? (These line segments come from tracing walking paths through a town park. The way the walking paths have been broken up in Illustrator made it very easy to construct the resulting glyphs.)
From what I can see, you have lots of single line segments that are not connected. Try dragging the ends of each line on top of each other in order to connect them. That will create one continuous path.
The outline function doesn’t produce compatible outlines. I’m working on this. The static instances are interpolated and then offset. But variable font need to be offset first and interpolatable later.
It’s true—I’d been using disconnected line segments for ease and expediency. (I traced the walking paths of a town park, broke that up into individual segments, then for each character just deleted the segments that “weren’t the glyph” ) But that process also side-stepped a small limitation in Glyphs: it seems that although rounded end caps are supported, rounded joints are not. (Or am I overlooking a toggle option for them somewhere?) [EDIT: Yes, I was.] Here’s an example where the apex of the A is made of a multi-anchor path, rather than the overlap of two rounded end caps. You can see how it is now a rather sharp point:
Part of me thinks this is kind of interesting; to let the tool dictate the outcome a bit. Another option, of course, is to scrap the rounded end caps all together. But as a new user of Glyphs, I’m really enjoying getting to know the software. (And the forums.) Everyone seems really responsive! So the lack of rounded bends feels like an opportunity for … a feature request?
EDIT: Well this is embarrassing. But also makes me love Glyphs even more. Before hitting “Submit” I did a quick Google search for “glyhps app rounded joints” and found this:
Which also includes the section “Rounded font vs. round corners”—which does pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Thank you, Glyphs! I decided to leave the original draft above in place as a sort of “user insight” for the product designers: The feature I wanted existed, but it wasn’t where / how I thought it would be. Yay again for these forums!
So yes, Sebastian, I see your point about crafting these as paths with multiple segments, rather than glyphs composed entirely of orphan segments. That should definitely help with the overlap issues. I’ll give that a test drive. (And thanks for responding so quickly!)
Ooooh, Georg! That sounds exciting I’m sure that’s just one of about a zillion things on your list to implement, so I’m asking purely out of curiosity and not intending to add to your pressures / anxieties in anyway: Do you have a rough idea of when that might land in Glyphs?
And that leads me to some related questions: How big is your dev team? Do you take on contractors? Or ever looking for new additions to the team? (Not that I myself am looking, but the fantasy of combining code and typography to make a living does sound lovely.) And thanks for responding so quickly earlier. I’m really enjoying Glyphs.
I’d very much appreciate some insight. Happy to share screen grabs, Glyph file, and what not. And thank you to the Glyphs app authors. Learning the app has been fun and I can feel how much effort must have gone into making something so complex feel rather simple and easy to use. Well done!
) But that process also side-stepped a small limitation in Glyphs: it seems that although rounded end caps are supported, 
I’m sure that’s just one of about a zillion things on your list to implement, so I’m asking purely out of curiosity and not intending to add to your pressures / anxieties in anyway: Do you have a rough idea of when that might land in Glyphs?