[OTVar] Generating SVG outlines from variable font instance

Chris Lewis

Does anyone know of a way to generate SVG paths from a variable font, given a particular point in the variation space? I might be able to figure it out starting from first principles, but I'm not really up on the specifics of how the variation math works. So I'm hoping someone smarter than me has already come up with a tool to do it

Thomas Phinney

You should be able to do this with FontLab VI, I think. It can open a Variable Font and export SVG.

Chris Lewis

So I posted this before doing even cursory research, and it turns out that the short answer is: Fontkit. It has some bugs that prevent it from making variable instances from WOFFs, but if you have the source TTF it works great. I hope to be able to submit some bug fixes for WOFF.

Thanks to @Jake Giltsoff for pointing me to @Laurence Penney's work along these lines for Axis-Praxis: http://www.typotalks.com/videos/axis-praxis-lessons-from-6-months-running-a-website-celebrating-variable-fonts/