Generating static instances from variable font file

Roel Nieskens

Are there any tools out there that can generate a static version based of an existing variable font (an .otf or .ttf)? Something like this:

$ staticize --wgth=150 --abcd=876 varfont.ttf

Where this would produce a non-variable, static font with axes "wgth" set to 150, and "abcd" to 876?

Simon Cozens

This was mine: https://gist.github.com/simoncozens/b3b7d132b0ad2427924cbddc1f28ef35

This is Behdad's:
https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools/blob/master/Lib/fontTools/varLib/mutator.py

Jens Kutilek

Just a small caveat: varLib.mutator doesn't hande GPOS/GSUB tables (yet). Or does it? Haven't looked at it for a while.

Just van Rossum

I don't think it does. Roel or Jens, would you make a fonttools github issue? I think fontTools.varLib.mutator should be the go-to tool for this task.

Roel Nieskens

Nice, fontTools.varLib.mutator seems to do as advertised:

➤ python3 mutator.py mutator-sans-variable.ttf wght=555 wdth=555
Location: {'wght': 555.0, 'wdth': 555.0}
Loading variable font
Normalized location: {'wdth': 0.55499267578125, 'wght': 0.55499267578125}
Mutating glyf/gvar tables
Mutating MVAR table
Mutating GDEF/GPOS/GSUB tables
Building interpolated tables
Removing variable tables

It says it's mutating the GPOS/GSUB tables — so it's been fixed in the mean time perhaps @Just van Rossum?

@Simon Cozens Have you stopped development on your implementation?

Jens Kutilek

Weird thing: I did a quick test for GPOS, and the kern feature values were interpolated, but the single positioning values (cpsp) were not.