Noto Sans CJK zero origin 400 comparison files

[davelab6]

@simoncozens as a priority today please could you make the following font files for evaluation in systems like games made with game engines that don't support VF yet, and therefore load the 100 weight only, because that's the zero origin with a single interpolation to the 900:

NotoSansCJK with 100-900 weight range with 100 as zero origin weight (current build default, but made fresh so it's an exact comparison)

NotoSansCJK with 100-900 weight range with 400 as zero origin weight, by adding an instance and inserting it back into the design space I guess. Not sure if the fonttools.instancer can do that in a straightforward way, I think so.

NotoSansCJK with 400-900 weight range with 400 as zero origin weight, by subspacing in a typical way.

For each of those, having otf.ttc, ttf.ttc, and ttf.ttc.woff2 files for the comparison would be ideal.

[simoncozens]

I have been able to produce the ttf.ttc and ttf.ttc.woff2 files and have put them in a shared Drive. I can't produce OTFs because:

• pyftsubset can't subspace CFF2 VF.
• hb-subset with the experimental build can in theory subspace CFF2 VFs, but it didn't seem to work nicely for me. (Metrics interpolated, but outlines did not.)
• I tried build my own CFF2 VF by merging the existing OTF instances, but it didn't work because the instances had different default hint types, default point types, etc.

I think we will need to get the different designspace ranges OTFs generated for us by Adobe.

[punchcutter]

Is the main purpose for systems that only load the default? I did a quick test on Source Han Sans that isn't 100% correct yet, but just to see the OTF goes from 30.8MB to about 39MB. If you really want I can do a correct one for Noto Sans CJK.

[davelab6]

Yes, exactly - unity and unreal engine don't support VF and so get the zero origin default, which is 100. The 8mb increase is worth paying to bridge the gap from here to them shipping VF support :)

[simoncozens]

If you really want I can do a correct one for Noto Sans CJK.

It looks like we would appreciate versions of Noto Sans and Noto Serif CJK with 400-900 range.

[AzusaHana]

I hope this is just a temporary change, as it causes 100-300 font weights to not display properly in other apps.

[simoncozens]

This is just for internal testing. You shouldn't be installing them anywhere.

[NightFurySL2001]

@simoncozens Although mentioned as "internal testing", the limited 400-900 range VF ended up in the official Android 15 release. Please help to swap out the font with the full 200-900 range VF with Google/Android's team.

[simoncozens]

Thanks. Unfortunately I have no control over what goes into Android. I will mention this to the team, but it seems that this is not a mistake and a decision was made to use the 400-900 range. I'm not sure on the details.

[davelab6]

The 2-master 100-900 font was found bad, since it broke pre-VF software (games), and moving to a 3-master font 100-400-900 was considered too much file-size, so, a 400-900 2-master font was shipped. See https://github.com/notofonts/noto-cjk/commit/07fb9c9a48ec63ba92f7bfd2608ca6fbb01940f1 for more discussion.

As Simon says, we don't control what goes into Android, so please file bugs against Android about this if it matters to you.

[NightFurySL2001]

From the above comments from @punchcutter (https://github.com/notofonts/noto-cjk/issues/272#issuecomment-2080416958), the 3-master 100-400-900 variable font only had a increase of ~8 MB (30.8 to 39 MB). I can't see how this is "too much" for Android.