Style linking with width variants

1

In a family with many widths the style linking in Mac Apps (TextEdit, Pages, etc) is broken for both the variable font as well as the statics. For example B button doesn’t activate the Compressed Bold but instead jumps to Condensed Bold.

Is there a way to fix this issue without bundling the widths in different subfamilies with preferredFamily and preferredSubfamily? (I want all widths to be listed under the same font family name in a very very long list).

1 Like
2

What have you set in the “of” field. The “Compressed Bold” should have “Compressed” (or whatever is the name of your Regular for that width.

3

The linking is 100% correct. I tested and noticed the same behaviour with other similar fonts too. If you want to test it check for example Acumin Variable.

4

But than it seems to be a bug in macOS?

5

Possibly. Just did another test with statics:

  • Full Family installed (Compressed, Condensed, etc).
    Compressed Regular becomes Condensed Bold when B pressed.
  • Just the Compressed files installed.
    Compressed Regular becomes Compressed Bold (as it should) when B pressed.

I am just wondering if anyone else can confirm this behaviour with similar fonts.

6

Hi @kosbarts, I cannot confirm the bug, but I have reported a bug to Apple which sound similar to your issue a couple weeks ago. For me it looks like Apple does not take care of the STAT table in a variable, but the STAT table contains information about ‘linked’ styles. I assume, that this would be the ‘style linking’ you are looking for in your example.
Apple promised me to have a look into it. So, I guess we have to wait and hope the best.

7

How did you report the issue to Apple? There are a few other similar issues I would like to report to them.

8

The normal way is this: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com

1 Like