What you describe is a basic subsetting operation. You would build a bug ‘super’ variation font and then you can remove glyphs and axis from or generate instances as needed.
There are tools already that can take a .glyphs file and spit out a variation font.
In what app can I test variable fonts?
Coming back to GX and tried to export a font. Got some messages regarding setting up axis in the masters and the main font info. But got this ugly message on export. Any thoughts?
Can you send me the .glyphs file? To support (at) (this website without www), please. I will have a look.
Done, thanks Erich!
I am afraid it is a bug in the current app version.
The bug is fixed already.
Edit: a new version is already available.
Thanks Georg, with the fix it worked perfectly with 2 masters.
When I export a font with more masters/axis, Glyphs is crashing constantly. Is it a known issue?
Is this still an issue in the latest cutting edge version (1034)?
I think I can do very basic stuff related with python and the use of terminal, but I can’t understand exactly what I have to do to use FontView.app. Can anyone explain me?
There is a prebuild version available on the github page. Look for the ‘release’ tab.
found it @GeorgSeifert. Thanks
However I’m not getting the expected results on font view. The axes are working fine, but the visual output of the variable font is strange.
H - Middle bar is gone
a - fine
m - the curves are not good.
… - This is happening on most glyphs
And on GlyphsApp the interpolation is working properly. I already generated the instances and they look fine.
Any help?
Can you send me the .glyphs and the .ttf file?
Sent to support! thanks
There are some problems with our master setup.
First, you don’t have masters for the width axis so remove it and put all the interpolations for the optical size from the third to the second master. Don’t be concerned with the master name in the Master settings. The order and position in the Axes parameter is what counts.
And the weight setting of the two semibold master have to be the same.
I had three axes because the ideia is to have a width axis also, but I fixed that. I will keep with 2 axes till I create the masters for width. Thanks for the correction on the semibold master.
Even so, the errors on the variable.ttf remain. I’m also testing with axis-praxis and the problem is the same.
That error has to do with how you draw your paths. You have a lot ‘dead’ curves, where on zero length handle. converting those to TrueType is difficult. There is a plugin from Mekkablue that can help you with fixing this,
Shouldn’t Glyphs simply run this handle-extractor as a first step when converting to TrueType curves? Should be rather easy to implement.
Also, I don’t like that @GeorgSeifert and @mekkablue often describe retracted BCPs as if they were an error by the designer. Retracted BCPs are very sensible and valid technique (which I use a lot). So, let’s not not call extracting handles
please. Any software that fails to handle retracted BCPs properly has a bug, not the font.
As a side note, you can use the RMX Harmonizer as a custom parameter on export, which allows you to keep your retracted BCPs in the source.
