Involved Masters

With this new feature you’re equipped for understanding even the most complex fontmaster-axes-setups, since it not only shows the involved masters for your currently dialed in interpolation.

You can see the percentage % of how much each master influences the current interpolation.

The color of the interpolation represents the involvement of each masters.

Center Preview Glyph

Sometimes it can be handy to have the interpolation behind your letter be centered no matter what. Well, here you are.

Numerical Values

Moving sliders only? Not really futuristic!
Naturally you can now adjust the values in the number labels as well. Simply type your desired values into the text fields.

And it doens’t stop there:
Use your arrow keys ⬇⬆ if you fancy to increment or decrement in single steps.
Hold the shift key to increment in steps of 10 or shift+cmd for steps of 100.

Extrapolation:
Using the text fields also empowers you to extrapolate beyond your axes limits, holy moly. And: Extrapolated values will be shown in gray to indicate that they’re probably not what you really want.

Link To Selected Master

If you activate this setting, the interpolation and the sliders will always follow your currently selected master. Very helpful to quickly dial them in for a starting point to continue your tweaking business.

Jump to Instances

Once you need to set the sliders to any of your instances, you’ll find this feature come in super handy. Select any of the instances in the context menu and the sliders will snap into their proper position.

Make Instance

Yep! Exactly that: Make an instance from your very current slider setup. Could that be done any quicker? I don’t think so.

Right To Left

Working on Arabic or Hebrew variable fonts? Or any other right-to-left (RTL) writing system? No worries, I got you covered right here. Give it a try.

Shown font: FiraGO Arabic.

Virtual Masters

You want to reduce the amount of masters but still change the appearance of some glyphs? That’s what virtual masters are for. Variable Font Preview is capable of presenting the result to you.

Show Nodes

Tune into the visual complexity as you wish! Depending on the stage in your workflow you might want to adjust what to see and what to hide. The nodes of your interpolation and/or the involved masters are definite toggle candidates.

Oh, and their size can be adjusted in the GlyphsApp preferences.

Glyph Swapping

You want to swap incompatible layers entirely on certain settings? The preview will deal with your bracket layers with ease.

Change Size and Color

It’s as easy as pie to change the preview size and color, since they are attached to the built-in preview settings of Glyphs. However you can also just grab the upper preview and drag it to resize.

PS: The example font is IBM Plex Thai Looped, which is by the way not even set up as variable font. That works, too! Cool, eh?

Streamlined User Interface

Lots of thinking and work went into streamlining the user interface for your greatest pleasure and ease of use. Elements that are not used too often went into a context menu, out of your sight when you don’t need them, providing you with more space to work, enjoy and observe your drawings.