[XeTeX] Multiple Master Fonts

Jonathan Nicholl tex at jnicholl.org
Thu Mar 31 01:52:22 CEST 2005


> No. There won't be any OpenType Layout tables in LWFN-packaged fonts, 
> they'd have to be repackaged as OTF/CFF in order to add those.
>
> And if there were GSUB/GPOS tables, and you load them in XeTeX using 
> the ICU engine to get OT layout support, then you wouldn't have access 
> to the MM axes, as that's provided through ATSUI.
>
> Sorry... you can't have both!

This probably shows my ignorance of font technology: is it possible to 
convert an Adobe MM font to the same format as Skia? That is a multiple 
master font and it has exciting GSUB-like tables. Or are the mechanisms 
for interpolation fundamentally different?

> Does anyone know if Jenson works correctly in Mac OS X (it has three 
> points defined on its optical axis scale, rather than two, making it 
> _weird_).

I'm afraid I don't know, since I don't have Jenson.

> Doesn't the Adobe Creative Suite still support them? You never know, 
> they might be reborn one day :)

In Photoshop CS you can certainly use MM fonts. I don't think that you 
can create new instances of the fonts, however. To do that you need a 
little Classic application that is supplied with the fonts. (There may 
be other ways too, but I have never looked into it.) I assume that what 
goes for Photoshop CS goes for the rest of the Creative Suite.

> My concern is that I suspect if the existing MM functionality in ATSUI 
> on Mac OS X were to break as a result of some other change, Apple 
> might not be prepared to invest much in fixing it. They may not 
> deliberately withdraw support, but my feeling is that it's not 
> guaranteed to last.

I'm sure that Jonathan is right: ATSUI support for Adobe MM fonts will 
one day disappear. I still think that MM fonts are worth considering, 
however. Remember that with command line tools like mmpfb  (from 
http://www.lcdf.org/~eddietwo/type/) you can generate a perfectly 
normal Type 1 font of any weight/width/optical size combination that 
the font allows. In fact I never expected to use my MM fonts through 
something like ATSUI. I wanted them for use with pdftex. I've got a 
couple of folders with a very large number of generated font instances. 
They weren't that much of a pain to generate (compared with the usual 
hassle of installing fonts for use in TeX!) And they enable very nice 
output.

Best wishes,

Jonathan



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