7 ms·

Introducing OpenType Variable Fonts

100 points by 3ds 10y ago

PaulHoule 10y ago
Is this like MetaFont?
- __jal 10y ago
  No. Metafont (at least for format, not the interpreter) is more akin to TrueType or Postscript font definitions. This is more akin to the old Adobe MultiMaster fonts, where the user installed one font that could then be dynamically tuned in various ways - weight, descenders, etc.
  - rspeer 10y ago
    That's what Metafont was supposed to be, too. See, for example, http://www.antonvasetenkov.com/metafont-demo http://www.antonvasetenkov.com/metafont-demo . But it seems that it ended up being used for a much more narrow purpose in the actual TeX stack that people use.
    - taeric 10y ago
      I took it as basically nobody else used METAFONT. I hate the conservative, everything is old and has been done view; however, it is easy to look at some of the original large projects that people chose to ignore and be amazed at what they were already doing. It isn't in XML, but METAPOST/METAFONT are two really really cool projects.
      - pgtan 10y ago
        > I took it as basically nobody else used METAFONT. yeah, well, same true for Multiple Master fonts. It ended up that Adobe gave the font metrics to the TeX[0] community. The complexity of the fonts was obviously too much for the "graphic designer". 0 https://www.lcdf.org/type/mm-metrics-1.2.tar.gz https://www.lcdf.org/type/mm-metrics-1.2.tar.gz
        taeric 10y ago
        What are the odds that this time, things will take off? :)
    - __jal 10y ago
      Ah, thanks for the info. I had no idea. My first year of college was the first year my school shifted most departments' document recommendations to MS Word from TeX, so I never really used it for authoring. Spending a day playing trying to make something useful with it has been on my someday-list for... a depressingly long time.
  - taeric 10y ago
    As the sibling post pointed out. METAFONT can be parameterized in more than just size of font. Computer Modern, in particular, has quite a few parameters that you can fiddle with. I don't think many people ever did. The book Computer Modern has a fun section at the end where it goes through several poems showing different parameters for the font for each section.
dorianm 10y ago
So how can I get the different variations of the font in CSS? (e.g.: I want condensed ultra light for instance) Will it work with font-weight and font-stretch? e.g.: Will this use the font variations instead of letting the browser do the interpolation? font-weight: 100; font-stretch: condensed;
- saadat 10y ago
  Google's announcement [1] about OT font variations mentions that a CSS proposal is in the works: > Together with other browser makers, we’re already working on a proposal to extend CSS fonts with variations. Once everyone agrees on the format, we’ll support it in Google Chrome. [1] http://opensource.googleblog.com/2016/09/introducing-opentype-font-variations.html http://opensource.googleblog.com/2016/09/introducing-opentyp...
drivingmenuts 10y ago
So, will this add significant weight to webfonts, if they include multiple variants of the same font?
- jawbone3 10y ago
  You did not read very far if you missed the bit where it said only deltas will be stored beyond the base. Though I'm sure some klutz will find a way to make obcenely large font files regardless, possibly by including the astral pnanes.
  - mistercow 10y ago
    It's not clear to me how that's actually going to result in smaller file sizes. Are they quantizing these deltas? Are they planning to exploit certain consistencies in font design that will lead to the deltas being more compressible? A delta does not intrinsically require less information than an absolute value.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >It's not clear to me how that's actually going to result in smaller file sizes In the obvious way that when A and B are similar enough (as font variations are) a delta between A and B is substantially smaller than bundling A AND B. >A delta does not intrinsically require less information than an absolute value. In the abstract, no, but in 99% of the cases where it's used in computing, e.g. it software updates, rsync, etc, it does, and that's exactly why it's used. Why would font variations, which intuitively are more alike than different, would have diffs larger than the "absolute value"?
      - taeric 10y ago
        How much of this could have been solved by simply using compression? That is, instead of making up a new delta language, just store the full files, and let compression tools do their job. I thought this was the definitive reason why git tracks full files, and not diffs. Turns out, that is just a better way to do things in most cases.
Brendinooo 10y ago
Very promising! Is there anywhere we can play with creating variable fonts? Guessing it'll be awhile before it hits FontForge...
- nsfmc 10y ago
  most of the type-design world is moving towards a ufo-centric workflow. ufos are basically simple to grok xml files defining bezier curves. Adobe's AFDKO (Adobe Font Development Kit for Opentype) supports ufo and generates from them full-fledged otfs. Another great resource is the more recent fonttools fork on github at https://github.com/behdad/fonttools https://github.com/behdad/fonttools . I used to like fontforge, it's a fine application, but the move to ufo has made it easier to apply older svg-based tools to editing splines and saving out as ufos. here's a free application, it looks promising! https://github.com/trufont/trufont https://github.com/trufont/trufont . finally it's worth looking at https://github.com/LettError/MutatorMath https://github.com/LettError/MutatorMath which has lots of the tools for interpolating masters. There are actually loads more resources and, if you are short on time or attention, my guess is that the tightest workflow will be coming to Robofont (which hovered around 500 euro for a while). Still, it's all very accessible to you even outside of fontforge and all the libraries for modifying ufo-style paths are freely available. take a look, it seems very fractured, but i think it's a nice distributed workflow all things considered given the final output.
amyjess 10y ago
This is the return of Multiple Master fonts that I always wished would happen but gave up hope on. Color me very, very impressed.
- ygra 10y ago
  Metafont also had similar capabilities, if I recall correctly.
- torgoguys 10y ago
  I came here to say the same thing. Multiple masters rise from their dormancy!

100 points by 3ds 10y ago

PaulHoule 10y ago

Is this like MetaFont?

__jal 10y ago
No. Metafont (at least for format, not the interpreter) is more akin to TrueType or Postscript font definitions. This is more akin to the old Adobe MultiMaster fonts, where the user installed one font that could then be dynamically tuned in various ways - weight, descenders, etc.
- rspeer 10y ago
  That's what Metafont was supposed to be, too. See, for example, http://www.antonvasetenkov.com/metafont-demo http://www.antonvasetenkov.com/metafont-demo . But it seems that it ended up being used for a much more narrow purpose in the actual TeX stack that people use.
  - taeric 10y ago
    I took it as basically nobody else used METAFONT. I hate the conservative, everything is old and has been done view; however, it is easy to look at some of the original large projects that people chose to ignore and be amazed at what they were already doing. It isn't in XML, but METAPOST/METAFONT are two really really cool projects.
    - pgtan 10y ago
      > I took it as basically nobody else used METAFONT. yeah, well, same true for Multiple Master fonts. It ended up that Adobe gave the font metrics to the TeX[0] community. The complexity of the fonts was obviously too much for the "graphic designer". 0 https://www.lcdf.org/type/mm-metrics-1.2.tar.gz https://www.lcdf.org/type/mm-metrics-1.2.tar.gz
      - taeric 10y ago
        What are the odds that this time, things will take off? :)
  - __jal 10y ago
    Ah, thanks for the info. I had no idea. My first year of college was the first year my school shifted most departments' document recommendations to MS Word from TeX, so I never really used it for authoring. Spending a day playing trying to make something useful with it has been on my someday-list for... a depressingly long time.
- taeric 10y ago
  As the sibling post pointed out. METAFONT can be parameterized in more than just size of font. Computer Modern, in particular, has quite a few parameters that you can fiddle with. I don't think many people ever did. The book Computer Modern has a fun section at the end where it goes through several poems showing different parameters for the font for each section.

dorianm 10y ago

So how can I get the different variations of the font in CSS? (e.g.: I want condensed ultra light for instance) Will it work with font-weight and font-stretch? e.g.: Will this use the font variations instead of letting the browser do the interpolation? font-weight: 100; font-stretch: condensed;

saadat 10y ago
Google's announcement [1] about OT font variations mentions that a CSS proposal is in the works: > Together with other browser makers, we’re already working on a proposal to extend CSS fonts with variations. Once everyone agrees on the format, we’ll support it in Google Chrome. [1] http://opensource.googleblog.com/2016/09/introducing-opentype-font-variations.html http://opensource.googleblog.com/2016/09/introducing-opentyp...

drivingmenuts 10y ago

So, will this add significant weight to webfonts, if they include multiple variants of the same font?

jawbone3 10y ago
You did not read very far if you missed the bit where it said only deltas will be stored beyond the base. Though I'm sure some klutz will find a way to make obcenely large font files regardless, possibly by including the astral pnanes.
- mistercow 10y ago
  It's not clear to me how that's actually going to result in smaller file sizes. Are they quantizing these deltas? Are they planning to exploit certain consistencies in font design that will lead to the deltas being more compressible? A delta does not intrinsically require less information than an absolute value.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >It's not clear to me how that's actually going to result in smaller file sizes In the obvious way that when A and B are similar enough (as font variations are) a delta between A and B is substantially smaller than bundling A AND B. >A delta does not intrinsically require less information than an absolute value. In the abstract, no, but in 99% of the cases where it's used in computing, e.g. it software updates, rsync, etc, it does, and that's exactly why it's used. Why would font variations, which intuitively are more alike than different, would have diffs larger than the "absolute value"?
    - taeric 10y ago
      How much of this could have been solved by simply using compression? That is, instead of making up a new delta language, just store the full files, and let compression tools do their job. I thought this was the definitive reason why git tracks full files, and not diffs. Turns out, that is just a better way to do things in most cases.

Brendinooo 10y ago

Very promising! Is there anywhere we can play with creating variable fonts? Guessing it'll be awhile before it hits FontForge...

nsfmc 10y ago
most of the type-design world is moving towards a ufo-centric workflow. ufos are basically simple to grok xml files defining bezier curves. Adobe's AFDKO (Adobe Font Development Kit for Opentype) supports ufo and generates from them full-fledged otfs. Another great resource is the more recent fonttools fork on github at https://github.com/behdad/fonttools https://github.com/behdad/fonttools . I used to like fontforge, it's a fine application, but the move to ufo has made it easier to apply older svg-based tools to editing splines and saving out as ufos. here's a free application, it looks promising! https://github.com/trufont/trufont https://github.com/trufont/trufont . finally it's worth looking at https://github.com/LettError/MutatorMath https://github.com/LettError/MutatorMath which has lots of the tools for interpolating masters. There are actually loads more resources and, if you are short on time or attention, my guess is that the tightest workflow will be coming to Robofont (which hovered around 500 euro for a while). Still, it's all very accessible to you even outside of fontforge and all the libraries for modifying ufo-style paths are freely available. take a look, it seems very fractured, but i think it's a nice distributed workflow all things considered given the final output.

amyjess 10y ago

This is the return of Multiple Master fonts that I always wished would happen but gave up hope on. Color me very, very impressed.

ygra 10y ago
Metafont also had similar capabilities, if I recall correctly.
torgoguys 10y ago
I came here to say the same thing. Multiple masters rise from their dormancy!