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Define axis coordinates for variable fonts

Source: R/font_variation.R
font_variation.Rd

Variable fonts is a technology that allows font designers to encode the full, continuous font space of a typeface into a single font file and then have the user set the coordinates of the variable axes to define the font. So, rather than having a font file for bold, bold + italic, thin, and thin + italic, etc. it is all encoded in a single file with a continuous range of all axes (e.g. weight doesn't have to be one of the 9 standard weights but can be anything in between). There are 5 standard axes that fonts can use, but font designers are free to define their own completely arbitrary axes as well. You can use font_info() to see which axes a font defines along with their value range and default setting. Values given as font_variation() will always win over the conventional setting if the axis is present in the font. For example, setting weight = "bold" along with variation = font_variation(weight = 650) will eventually request a weight of 650 (helfway between semibold and bold), assuming the weight-axis is present in the font. For clarity however, it is advised that font_variation() is only used for axes that can otherwise not be accessed by "top-level" arguments.

Usage

font_variation(
  italic = NULL,
  weight = NULL,
  width = NULL,
  slant = NULL,
  optical_sizing = NULL,
  ...
)

Arguments

italic

Value between 0 and 1. Usually treated as a boolean rather than a continuous axis

weight

Usually a value between 100 and 900 though fonts can limit or expand the supported range. Weight names are also allowed (see as_font_weight())

width

Usually a value between 1 and 9 though fonts can limit or expand the supported range. Width names are also allowed (see as_font_width())

slant

The angular slant of the font, usually between -90 and 90 (negative values tilt in the "standard" italic way)

optical_sizing

Stroke thickness compensation for the glyphs. During rendering the thickness of the stroke is usually increased when the font is set at small sizes to increase readability. Set this to the size of the font to get the "expected" look at that size.

...

Further axes and coordinate settings

Value

A font_variation object with coordinates for the provided axes

Note

systemfonts uses a scale of width values ranging from 1-9 while the width axis uses a different scale (0.5 - 2.0) going from half as wide to twice as wide as "normal". When using the width argument the coordinate values is automatically converted. If you set the value based on the width tag (wdth) then no conversion will happen.