[XeTeX] support for variation & multiple master fonts

[Will Robertson]

On 21/12/2005, at 9:36 , Jonathan Kew wrote:

> Anyhow, at this time I'd be interested to know whether people care  
> much about var/MM support, in particular on older OS versions --  
> how many people will be impacted, and how badly, if it becomes a  
> 10.4-only feature in XeTeX?

I'm running Tiger, and I agree that they're fun to play with, but  
there's no real future in either MM (which is explicitly dead!) or  
AAT (which shows no sign of life).

[aside]
> But as far as I understand it, newer OpenType versions like Minion  
> Pro are no longer MM; instead, you get a range of separate  
> instances. (Right? I don't have a current Adobe collection to check  
> this stuff!)

Yep; as inelegant a solution as it is to have the multitude of  
different font files, this is what they're doing. The instances  
themselves are actually developed internally at Adobe using MM fonts,  
if that makes any sense.

Will