Is there any open-source way to create OpenType variable fonts yet?

Daniel Benjamin Miller
Daniel Benjamin Miller Posts: 117
edited April 2020 in Type Design Software
Is anyone aware of a free and open-source solution for creating OpenType VFs? And yes, I'm well aware of the commercial solutions; I'm not interested in them. Right now, I am aware that FF has some MM support (not OT1.8) and METAFONT can create variable fonts, of course, but again, not of the OpenType variety.
[Addendum: I guess it is possible in some way to do, by creating a file manually, and the using fontmake, but this is extremely painful and not practical. But maybe that is the way to go.]
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  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,998
    Daniel Benjamin Miller said:
    [Addendum: I guess it is possible in some way to do, by creating a file manually, and the using fontmake, but this is extremely painful and not practical. But maybe that is the way to go.]
    But it’s free software, surely you can take advantage of your four freedoms and code something yourself.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,243
    If you can make interpolable master instances and export them as individual UFOs, you could manually edit a designspace file, and then use FontTools to build a variable font.
  • Daniel Benjamin Miller
    Daniel Benjamin Miller Posts: 117
    James Puckett said:
    Daniel Benjamin Miller said:
    [Addendum: I guess it is possible in some way to do, by creating a file manually, and the using fontmake, but this is extremely painful and not practical. But maybe that is the way to go.]
    But it’s free software, surely you can take advantage of your four freedoms and code something yourself.

    Well, essentially, fontmake is a tool for compiling from ufo or glyphs format to OTF. But it has no editing capabilities. So yes, I could, but that thask would be the task of creating a font editor from scratch.
  • Daniel Benjamin Miller
    Daniel Benjamin Miller Posts: 117
    John Hudson said:
    If you can make interpolable master instances and export them as individual UFOs, you could manually edit a designspace file, and then use FontTools to build a variable font.

    Maybe this is possible with some adaptation from FF's MM support.

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