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Variable Fonts

v-fonts.com

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Re: Variable Fonts

#22

Post by aquir »

Great website but font prices are out of hand! Found one that looks awesome (West) but it's 350EUR if you want all styles! If you want Regular+Medium+Bold, that's still 150EUR. I bought Berkeley Mono back then for $75 and that is like the maximum what I would pay for a font. I am not a commercial user btw.

Re: Variable Fonts

#23

Post by cqqxo4zV46cp »

aquir wrote: post #22

Great website but font prices are out of hand! Found one that looks awesome (West) but it's 350EUR if you want all styles! If you want Regular+Medium+Bold, that's still 150EUR. I bought Berkeley Mono back then for $75 and that is like the maximum what I would pay for a font. I am not a commercial user btw.

Non-commercial font usage is easily niche.

Re: Variable Fonts

#25

Post by sherry-sherry »

aquir wrote: post #22

Great website but font prices are out of hand! Found one that looks awesome (West) but it's 350EUR if you want all styles! If you want Regular+Medium+Bold, that's still 150EUR. I bought Berkeley Mono back then for $75 and that is like the maximum what I would pay for a font. I am not a commercial user btw.

It takes a lot of time and skill to make a good font. Piracy is rampant and tricky to track down (let alone go after) people and businesses who use them without the correct licensing.

Re: Variable Fonts

#26

Post by ghusbands »

kragen wrote: post #8
simlevesque wrote: post #5

I wasted two days recently trying to make a variable font using free software. The only ressource I found is a youtube video telling me to use a python script from a google drive. It didn't work despite many many tries. I have two woffs of the same font that I bought and I wanna make a variable woff2 with only these two variants. I couldn't believe that there isn't a clear way to do this. Here's the youtube video: ht…

there is a well-known piece of free software for this called "metafont" (also the original name for the concept here being neologized "variable font"—a "metafont" is an infinite set of fonts produced by an algorithm from input variables) but it doesn't have a gui and can't import woff or truetype

I think you may be missing the point. Metafonts have absolutely nothing to do with "variable fonts". It's a completely different branch of font technology. You cannot produce a variable font as OP intends using metafont.

Re: Variable Fonts

#27

Post by kragen »

ghusbands wrote: post #26
kragen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is a well-known piece of free software for this called "metafont" (also the original name for the concept here being neologized "variable font"—a "metafont" is an infinite set of fonts produced by an algorithm from input variables) but it doesn't have a gui and can't import woff or truetype

I think you may be missing the point. Metafonts have absolutely nothing to do with "variable fonts". It's a completely different branch of font technology. You cannot produce a variable font as OP intends using metafont.

metafonts, as implemented by the metafont program, and variable fonts are literally exactly the same thing: a parameterized font which produces an infinite set of fonts as you vary some parameters

i think what you mean to say is that the metafont program isn't compatible with truetype or opentype, but i kind of already explained that in the comment you are replying to

Re: Variable Fonts

#29

Post by kibwen »

I'm torn. Variable fonts are neat, but they also lay bare how woefully complicated every single layer of our software stack is where even displaying a single glyph requires interpreting a Turing-complete programming language. As I get older I increasingly just want a more transparent and understandable system that does less, even if that means giving up bells and whistles like automagic font kerning.
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