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bBoxType / FiraSans

Fira is a large Open Font typeface family licensed under OFL
http://scripts.sil.org/OFL
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The characters became thinner and lower #2

Closed atheistray closed 6 years ago

atheistray commented 8 years ago

I'm using fira as the system fonts on my rooted Android 4.4 phone. I noticed some differences in this new release: the characters seem to go down a bit and they become slightly thinner. This is the regular weight from last release on opera browser: screenshot_2016-10-18-22-19-36 This is the new release. Notice the gap between those suggestions and URLs, and the letter g and y on the keyboard. The characters look slightly thinner. screenshot_2016-10-18-22-25-26 The same thing happened to light weight too. It became less legible. screenshot_2016-10-18-22-33-18 screenshot_2016-10-18-22-46-50 Finally, the new ligatures (ff, ft,...) are not working.

carrois commented 8 years ago

Thanks for reporting. We’re discussing your issues internally, let me get back to you tomorrow in detail. Which version of Fira did you use before (your 1st screenshots)?

atheistray commented 8 years ago

The ttf files from the last release from Mozilla. https://github.com/mozilla/Fira/releases/tag/4.202

carrois commented 8 years ago

All your concerns except from the ligature issue are probably export and/or auto hinting issues, we had some changes within the routine. Need some time to test here.

The ligatures with 2 glyphs should work fine. Are you sure whether "dlig" feature is enabled in your browser? Ligatures from 3 glyphs (ffj, ffl, ffj, fft) don’t work for the Upright files, see issue #3 Will be updated soon.

atheistray commented 8 years ago

I think maybe they're export issues rather than hinting, because Google says Android doesn't implement hinting. I'm not sure though. My browser doesn't enable discretionary ligatures by default, so it doesn't show new ligatures.

carrois commented 8 years ago

Can you write an email to fira@carrois.com? We would like to send you test files, if that’s ok with you. Thanks for your cooperation.

atheistray commented 8 years ago

Sure, I just sent one. I'm Ray. The weights I usually use are regular, light, thin, medium and their italic variants. (TTF) I don't mind trying more weights though.

carrois commented 8 years ago

Ray, thanks again for your cooperation. Please have a look at the new version, should be fine. Can you confirm?

atheistray commented 8 years ago

Yes, I can confirm both problems with the height and hinting are solved. However, new ligatures are still not showing. Are they intended to be used only as discretionary ligatures?

atheistray commented 8 years ago

The only working ligatures are fi and fl.

carrois commented 8 years ago

Are they intended to be used only as discretionary ligatures?

Yes

atheistray commented 8 years ago

But shouldn't they be standard ligatures? I thought discretionary ligatures were those such as st, ct, et, etc (haha).

BonnEconLab commented 8 years ago

Indeed, in many other fonts—such as Minion Pro and Calibri, but also Meta and Meta Serif—the “f” ligatures are all treated as standard ligatures (lig), as atheistray pointed out. Hence, I also expected the new Fira “f” ligatures to be coded as standard ligatures.

carrois commented 8 years ago

I general, there is no consistent rule which ligatures should be standard an which discretionary. It depends on the design.

Our initial thought was to make the additional ligatures of the new release optional by putting them into dlig-feature. Like that, there won’t be any change in consisting designs. If somebody likes to see the new ligatures, he/she should switch on the dlig feature. But this way might be a bit too easy, you are right here.

So we delved into the topic and want to share our conclusions. You are invited to discuss further.

A problem of defining all new ligatures as standard could be the fact that some designers increase leading of the typeface. A lot of ligatures wouldn’t be good in this case. (On the other hand, they would not want to have standard ligatures as well because these would be way too narrow. So they would probably switch off both features, liga and dlig). So in fact, there might be no problem here...

Also, we think that the opinion of easyaspi314 in the original discussion is quite reasonable: Let’s not create ligatures where they are not necessary. https://github.com/mozilla/Fira/issues/53

So our question is: which ligatures are necessary and which ones are optional (in particular for Fira)? As necessary we defined only clashes.

Fira is a huge system with all Sans fonts coming out of 8-Master files. Regarding this large range of widths and weights, it might happen that a ligature is not necessary in most of the widths/weights but it is indeed necessary in few widths/weights. But the features have to work for each of the final fonts. We did some testing and came to the conclusion that you can find a necessity for each of the new ligatures (often only in the fat weights). Thus, we decided to put them all into liga (standard) with the next update.

In addition, there will be a contextual alternate f (with a longer or shorter top) in combination with ascender letters like h, k, etc. So to say another way of solving clash problems.