Support for Variable Fonts and OpenType features

[gorjious]

I am curious if there is/will be support for Variable Fonts. There would be such fascinating typographic potential if there is an Op that parses all the axes of a variable font to be manipulated with sliders or any other means.

It would also be helpful to have access to the various other OpenType Features, such as stylistic sets, small caps, contextual alternates, ligatures, etc.

[steam0r]

hey,

these new ops are basically a wrapper around this library, so we are kinda bound to their capabilities:

https://github.com/opentypejs/opentype.js

here is a few questions on their issue tracker regarding variables fonts:

https://github.com/opentypejs/opentype.js/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+variable

[pandrr]

yes

[steam0r]

looks good:

https://caniuse.com/?search=font-feature-settings
https://caniuse.com/?search=font-variation-settings

maybe give it a try?

[gorjious]

Alrighty. Diving into my first venture using cables.gl!
Thanks

[kdklv]

Tbh, I havent seen so many cases of variable fonts being used in webgl/canvas setting. Usually are seen rendered in dom, controlled trough css, etc.
But a while ago i played around with the textmesh op to do so / modified it so you could control certain variable axes like width, weight and slant. It is super messy and heavy, but it worked. Pandur also helped me a bunch, but since my coding skills are limited i got stuck and gave up.

in case anyone is interested I can share the op and explain what i did (and werent able to do) :)

[gorjious]

@kdklv I'd love to take a look at the op and hear about your process!