macOS Ventura uses unexpected style as default in variable font #127
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Someone asked that I try moving the subfamily names (bouncy, informal, bouncy informal) after the weight names. ShantellSans[BNCE,INFM,SPAC,ital,wght]-style_names_reordered.ttf.zip As a workaround, this seems like an overall improvement. It does get the default “Regular” correct, and it sorts the Normal upright weight styles before subfamily styles. But, it has some caveats of its own:
Here’s how the static subfamilies are split out, like more common (smaller) type families:
By contrast, SF Pro does group by subfamilies, for widths ([Normal], Expanded, Condensed, and Compressed). This is much more what I intend to do with the Shantell Sans subfamilies.
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As one more test of the reordered styles, I opened it in Adobe Illustrator. I’m not quite sure what font metadata is used to product the Adobe style menu... maybe the STAT table, plus name table? It still isn’t my ideal ordering, but here, it feels markedly better. All weights appear in order (with Light before Regular), and it keeps the Italic ordering consistent (with no interference from alphabetical sorting). If TextEdit sorted like this, I might stick with the rearranged style names.
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To test and contrast how the as-is v1.008 style naming works in Illustrator, here is an image of that. It still sorts by weight first, rather than “subfamily” names as I would like, but when subfamily names come first in this case, it makes the menu feel more chaotic. For this reason, I am tempted to perhaps rearrange the style naming in a new release, if I can’t find a way to make Illustrator sort by subfamily first. Then again, I hesitate to change/hack a valid typeface just to conform to the UI whims of this or that software.
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Actually, comparing the two Illustrator menus points out another drawback of sorting the subfamily names after the weight names: what should be done with the “Italic” naming? In particular, it is conventional to put “Italic” as the last descriptor in a style name. However, this becomes awkward if there is a subfamily name between the weight and the Italic descriptor. It gets further confused because [Regular] Italic leaves out the weight name, as is a common convention (and the Google Fonts specification for Italic style naming). But then, the [Regular] Italic styles have “Italic” first and “Bouncy” (etc) last, which breaks the ordering of all the other Italic style names. So, I won’t rearrange the style names. |
arrowtype
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question
When I select “Shantell Sans” in a font menu on macOS (Ventura 13.0 (22A380)), the style that is given by default is “Bouncy Regular” rather than simply [Normal] “Regular”.
Recommendation to users
If you wish to select the "Normal" Regular, with a consistent baseline, find "Shantell Sans Normal" in your font family menu and use that.
Note: for this advice to be applicable to you, you will need to have installed both the variable and static fonts from this repo’s releases(i.e. not from Google Fonts).
Problem Description
Bouncy Regular is listed as the first instance in the style menu. However, nothing I can find in the font file (using ttx) indicates that Bouncy Regular should be the default or regular style.
The only logic I can guess at, based on the style menu ordering (in the second TextEdit screenshot below), is this:
A frustrating and confusing thing is that SF Pro has a more sensible style menu ordering, despite having no such ordering (that I am finding) in its font file, at least within the name, STAT, and fvar tables.
Screenshots
TextEdit default for "Shantell Sans":
TextEdit style menu ordering for "Shantell Sans":
Font Book showing default style (as decided by macOS logic):
Font Metadata
From ttx: name, STAT, and fvar tables (Click to expand)
Recommendation/request to Apple (if they’re reading this 🙏)
Look at the fvar table for metadata on how a font developer has requested instances to be ordered, and follow that if possible.
If there is a different way of specifying the ordering for macOS font menus, please let me know! If you prefer to email directly, you can reach me at [email protected]
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