Variable Fonts: Why does the 'Variation Font Origin' param use masters?

1

Hey,

Why can’t we set the Variation Font Origin to the position of an instance? we can only set it to the pos of a master.

Many families only have masters on Extremes so we’re not able to set the Regular as the origin.

After skimming through the spec, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/typography/opentype/spec/fvar this instance approach certainly feels possible.

2

This parameter determines which master is used to build the plain glyf table. There needs to be another parameter to set the defaults positions of the sliders.

3

Thank you Georg!

Have all the customParameters been documented?

I looked but couldn’t find anything

4

The handbook is in the works.

5

Any news on this?

6

@GeorgSeifert Any news on that? I would much appreciate the possibility to specify an instance as the variable origin, instead of a master. Same reason like @Marc_Foley mentioned above. Often we have only the extremes as master and would like to specify eg. the middle instance (Regular) as the default outlines.

7

Just saying: an Adobe bug forces us to use the first master (min value on all axes) as the origin. If you set as origin anything else, you get a weird Regular on top of everything. In this case I don’t even have any “Regular” instances, thanks Adobe for adding one for me.

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