Add Ability to "Freeze" OpenType Features in Font Downloads

[stevemolitor]

On their websites some fonts like Commit Mono and MonaLisa let you select desired Open Type features (like ligatures) and then download font files that "freeze" those features into your download. This is useful in editors that don't yet support OpenType features (like Emacs). Could Monaspace add a feature like that to your website?

Alternately tested instructions on how to "freeze" features using either fonttools-opentype-feature-freezer or FontFreeze would be helpful. I couldn't get either to work with Monaspace fonts. I was trying to bake the ligatures in. fonttools-opentype-feature-freezer didn't report any errors, but the ligatures didn't show up in my editor either. FontFreeze did bake in the ligatures and I was able to see them in my editor, but it also messed up the weights of the fonts, making them much heavier. Regular looked like bold.

Great fonts btw, and the textual healing is super interesting! (I had to jump thru some hoops to get that working in Emacs, but got it working - can share if anyone is interested.)

[stevemolitor]

FontFreeze did bake in the ligatures and I was able to see them in my editor, but it also messed up the weights of the fonts, making them much heavier. Regular looked like bold.

OK I found that if I set a "predefined" weight of "regular" / 400 in FontFreeze using the Monaspace variable font, I got a font that defaulted to a regular weight and had the ligatures.

However I then lost the textual healing. :(

[Finii]

However I then lost the textual healing. :(

Huurz? That's a bummer. Ah I guess FontFreeze does only work correctly with static fonts, did try them?

[heathercran]

The next update will include a "frozen" version of the fonts with texture healing and all ligatures enabled by default. Adding a customizable font exporter to the website will take longer, but it's something we'd love to add in the future.