dberlow
commented
2 years ago Don’t we already make the comd-B yield a proper bold, regardless of size, via our pyramidal opsz axis?
From there, in inter-family use, yes only parametric axes can help. And that goes for all other registered axes, as w/out parametric info, “the people's minds are mislead to complete confusion as to what weight”, width, or size are. With parametric values, (w/out even having axes, just the values), we can know all.
In the course of explaining to a colleague why OS/2 WeightClass values are not very useful, I mentioned this example, which I then realised I don't have an easy citation/reference to.
Within high end typography, there's bold for headlines and then a different bold for paragraph-emphasis, which is not as bold; the amount of boldness in OPQ terms is different for each case. (Perhaps there are more cases.)
With a proper weight scale like parametric axes, "the B button" (or Cmd-B hotkey) can apply a contextually-appropriate and adapted amount of weight, based on the content markup, point size, etc.
But with the OS/2 WeightClass values which are arbitrary and can't be used for inter-family relations/calcuations, we cant build that feature as easily, or, at a deeper and more sublte level, people's minds are mislead to complete confusion as to what weight even is, so that such a feature can't be thought of, and doesn't get built at all.
If you agree, I'd love to see this added, explained and illustrated, in the Styles section.