Kent Lew

Adobe’s Optical Metrics. Makes my font(s) look like they were fitted by an amateur.

I don’t necessarily agree with this. Depending upon the relationship between styles, I have found that I can often start from previous kerning. 

If I am methodical and consistent in my development of a heavy weight, in fact, many pairs can share the same value across fonts, and other pairs may take a common adjustment.

For example, I just quickly analyzed a recent Ext Latin sans-serif family I delivered, and the Ultra pole shares about 80% of the kern pairs/values with the Regular. Another ~15% are the same pair but with adjusted values, and the remaining ~5% are pairs unique to the Ultra. (There are also a few pairs unique to the Regular.)

This will not always be possible, of course. And not to the same degree with all styles of type. But neither is it inconceivable.

There is no fixed formula, but there can be rational relationships and, with experience, one can be methodical about it all.

And, yes, the eye should be the final arbiter.

Generally, cap height is maintained across weights, even as xheight may increase to accommodate weight gain. (Any difference in cap height should certainly be less noticeable than your current deviation, IMO.)

I would split the difference here somewhat. 100 units between extremes does look like a lot, but forcing it down to ~10 units, as you expressed previously, would be Procrustean, I think. I would expect a normal variance of more like 40–50 units in a style like this.

So, yes, I think you need to confront redrawing your masters. But, I think you have more to worry about than just adapting to adjusted proportions. There are several areas in the basic execution that still need refinement, as others have indicated.

Fair enough. First week or so can work. General wisdom and experience at Font Bureau, though, was that December releases were disadvantaged. We might release an expansion, because that was often aimed more at existing customers who were predisposed to pay attention. But not something new and exciting.

I’ll be curious to hear what native users think of Cyrillic Лл. To my eye, they are not terribly convincing. Дд perhaps only slightly more so. I think capital Ъ probably needs to be one column wider. But again, a native user would have to confirm.

(I love the lepidoteran Ж, however! ;-)

Either Ελληνικά is spelled wrong, or I’m just not seeing some of those characters.