Designspace V5, what’s possible?

[jenskutilek]

I tried to upgrade some of my designspace files to v5, and it’s great what’s now possible from one file where previously a lot of different parts were involved. Congrats to everyone making it possible!

I wonder if it's possible to build both a Roman and Italic VF from the same designspace file, where both VFs are not outline-compatible. I tried but failed. It feels like it might be possible, as 99.9% of the data is identical for both the Roman and the Italic separate designspace files. Am I missing something?

[belluzj]

It should work out of the box with fontmake and ufo2ft pre-releases if you define a discrete axis for your Italic axis, and 2 <variable-font> elements. You could take inspiration from these test files:

fonttools/Tests/designspaceLib/data/test_v5_sourceserif.designspace

Lines 30 to 35 in 42e4d66

	<axis tag="ital" name="italic" values="0 1" default="0">
	<labels ordering="2">
	<label uservalue="0" name="Roman" elidable="true"/>
	<label uservalue="1" name="Italic"/>
	</labels>
	</axis>

fonttools/Tests/designspaceLib/data/test_v5_sourceserif.designspace

Lines 168 to 221 in 42e4d66

	<variable-fonts>
	<variable-font name="SourceSerif4Variable-Roman">
	<axis-subsets>
	<axis-subset name="weight"/>
	<axis-subset name="optical"/>
	<axis-subset name="italic" uservalue="0"/>
	</axis-subsets>
	<!-- The per-variable-font lib is to be merged into the global lib on
	conversion to a DS v4, overwriting keys in the global lib. -->
	<lib>
	<dict>
	<key>public.skipExportGlyphs</key>
	<array>
	<string>caron.alt</string>
	<string>commabelowcmb.alt</string>
	<string>tonos.cap</string>
	<string>f.ligalong</string>
	<string>dieresiscmb.tight</string>
	<string>IJ</string>
	<string>Tbar</string>
	<string>colontriangularmod</string>
	<string>crossmark</string>
	<string>ij</string>
	<string>overline</string>
	<string>similar</string>
	<string>tbar</string>
	<string>triangularbullet</string>
	<string>turkicdsccmb</string>
	</array>
	</dict>
	</lib>
	</variable-font>
	<variable-font name="SourceSerif4Variable-Italic">
	<axis-subsets>
	<axis-subset name="weight"/>
	<axis-subset name="optical"/>
	<axis-subset name="italic" uservalue="1"/>
	</axis-subsets>
	<lib>
	<dict>
	<key>public.skipExportGlyphs</key>
	<array>
	<string>caron.alt</string>
	<string>commabelowcmb.alt</string>
	<string>f.liga</string>
	<string>f.ligalong</string>
	<string>tonos.cap</string>
	<string>dieresiscmb.tight</string>
	<string>turkicdsccmb</string>
	</array>
	</dict>
	</lib>
	</variable-font>
	</variable-fonts>

fonttools/Tests/designspaceLib/data/test_v5_MutatorSans_and_Serif.designspace

Lines 4 to 9 in 42e4d66

	<axis tag="SRIF" name="serif" values="0 1" default="0">
	<labels>
	<label uservalue="0" name="Sans"/>
	<label uservalue="1" name="Serif"/>
	</labels>
	</axis>

fonttools/Tests/designspaceLib/data/test_v5_MutatorSans_and_Serif.designspace

Lines 120 to 143 in 42e4d66

	<variable-fonts>
	<variable-font name="MutatorSansVariable_Weight_Width">
	<axis-subsets>
	<axis-subset name="weight"/>
	<axis-subset name="width"/>
	</axis-subsets>
	</variable-font>
	<variable-font name="MutatorSansVariable_Weight">
	<axis-subsets>
	<axis-subset name="weight"/>
	</axis-subsets>
	</variable-font>
	<variable-font name="MutatorSansVariable_Width">
	<axis-subsets>
	<axis-subset name="width"/>
	</axis-subsets>
	</variable-font>
	<variable-font name="MutatorSerifVariable_Width">
	<axis-subsets>
	<axis-subset name="serif" uservalue="1"/>
	<axis-subset name="width"/>
	</axis-subsets>
	</variable-font>
	</variable-fonts>

[jenskutilek]

Thank you! I was missing the fontmake prerelease version :)

[belluzj]

Great! Please comment about your experience with the pre-release so we can fix bugs if any and make it a real release soon :)