m4rc1e
commented
3 years ago I just compared the "χ" (chi) in v2 web family against v3 web family. It appears that the v2 web is faulty.
v2: right sidebearing is too tight
v3 (this release): sidebearings appear balanced
If I look at the unhinted v2 fonts, it doesn't have this issue
I reckon the v2 web chi is faulty because in the v2 build we're swapping the chi with the chi.alt but we've forgotten to update the metrics in the hmtx table.
Imo, no action needed since v3 is already fixed and the changes are minimal.
This version of Roboto v3 has different glyph metrics for the Italic webfonts, when compared against the v2 Italic webfonts.
If I inspect Roboto v2, the webfonts do not have the same glyph metrics as the unhinted and android sets. This may have happened because Roboto v2 went through a series of design updates, such as adding better Italics and it was deemed too expensive or time consuming to rehint the font (I can investigate the git history if needed). For v3, all sets have the same metrics since we got Mike to rehint the project and it's built from a single set of sources.
Here's a before and after gif which compares the v2 Reg and Italic against v3 VF instances
We can see some slight changes in the Roman. I plan to see what's happening to the "χ" and will make a fix.
@davelab6 @rsheeter I brought this up in the meeting we had last quarter. Thought I'd cc you both so you can see the full implications of if this change since we did approve it based on a different sample.