Claus Eggers SørensenIt is so lame that I can’t set a coordinate as my variable font origin.
Frank Grießhammer@clauseggers It’s because the whole structure of VFs has been thought up by engineers, most of which have never designed a font.
Just van Rossum@frankrolf @clauseggers it’s because:
1. The VF format was designed to be backwards compatible. You start with the default good old non-vf ttf, then add optional variations on top as new tables that can be ignored.
2. Proposed solutions have not yet been agreed upon, as far as I know.
I agree that’s lame in 2025.
@frankrolf @clauseggers and there’s absolutely no need to dunk on the engineers without whom we would not have variable fonts to begin with. Are variable fonts perfect? Hell no. Are they useful and awesome? Hell yes.
@justvanrossum @clauseggers Not dunking on anyone, just stating my opinion
@frankrolf @clauseggers it’s a shitty hot take
@justvanrossum @clauseggers also an opinion.
@frankrolf @clauseggers your “opinion” is a shitty hot take because it pretended to give a reason for something while in fact it only dunked on the people who designed it.
@justvanrossum @clauseggers I am stating my perception of the current state of VFs. Of course not everyone agrees with me, and they don’t have to. I (like many others) have been frustrated by the extreme overhead that VF production requires, while the goal often just is getting pixels on screen. That maybe could be perceived as “dunking”.
Are VFs great? No question. Are they easy to produce? Not really.
Are they offering benefits to normal users? Perhaps.
@justvanrossum @clauseggers I don’t mean to offend you, or anyone else who worked on making VFs what they are today. However, I feel the field is often extremely technocratic (aka not understandable for mere designers) without any regard toward goals which those designers may have.
@frankrolf @clauseggers your statement boils down to: “no offense, but this feature is bad because the engineers didn’t know what they were talking about “. Which is factually wrong and offensive. And therefore a shitty hot take.
@justvanrossum @clauseggers That’s not what I meant to say.
Engineers know what they’re talking about, but they don’t (or can’t) see the necessity to have a VF be represented by anything else than the origin, which is usually ExtraLight Condensed. The data might be more “pure” that way – however, does it really communicate the intent of the designer, or properly represent the font? No.
I know the why, and all the ins and outs – still, there’s a big disconnect between the tech and the design.
@frankrolf @clauseggers again, this totally misses the point of why this is the way it is and why it hasn’t been solved yet, and blames it on narrow-mindedness of engineers. Which is absolute nonsense. With which I shall leave this thread.
Anirban Mitra 
@frankrolf @justvanrossum @clauseggers I am a rank amature and I started learning making variable font (using libre tools) taking bold normal as base line and interpolating weights and widths from that. Probably the spec was made to enable non designers like me to create font variations, not considering the designer's perspective.
@mitradranirban @justvanrossum @clauseggers I’m glad things seem to be working out for you!
Everyone has a bias, so please don’t take this discussion too seriously :-)
Everyone has a bias, so please don’t take this discussion too seriously :-)
@justvanrossum @frankrolf Frank was objective in his statement. There was no dunking.