Beta 1.046 - upgraded Slant & Cursive variation axes

This version updates the old font axes slnt+ital to slnt+CRSV. This avoids using two axes that have fairly similar descriptions in the OpenType spec, as it has become fairly clear that if the ital axis is used, ital=1 should be able to activate the "Italic" styles. Instead, this axis tweaks the behavior of how cursive letterforms are substituted in along the Slant axis, so it has been renamed as "Cursive" (CRSV).

It adds one additional tweak to the previous font: Instead of making cursive substitutions happen at 7.5deg of slant, it makes them happen at 14deg.

This makes it simple to smoothly transition to an oblique or "sloped roman" style up to slnt -13.99, or to activate a proper italic beyond slnt -14. In CSS (once this is better supported in browsers), it will be an obqlique with font-style: oblique XXdeg up to 14deg, or a true italic with font-style: italic or an unspecified font-style: oblique (unless CRSV is changed to 0 or 1 in font-variation-settings). This makes the oblique XXdeg value quite a bit more useful than before, as it allows smooth CSS animations without requiring font-variation-settings to set CRSV to 0.

Beta 1.043 - detailed spacing & kerning refinements

Download the zip for installation notes and recommendations.

The previous release was a big leap forward; this one is much more incremental.

This release adds a few detailed refinements, including:

• Improved kerning in quote marks in Sans styles
• Improved spacing for fractions & Sans inferiors + superiors

Known open issues

• (Same as the previous release)
• More at https://github.com/arrowtype/recursive/issues. If you able to, please file any new issues if you find them! :)

Beta 1.042 – improved build for higher quality fonts, fonts for code, subset woff2s, and many little refinements

Download the zip for installation notes and recommendations.

This release adds many upgrades and refinements, including:

• An improved build process with static autohinting and a properly-engineered STAT table for more stable variable fonts
• Static fonts specifically for use in code editors, now supporting italic themes
• Premade woff2 subsets & CSS for use on general websites (specifically tailored to English-language sites because most technical docs & blogs are written in English, but these subsets will load in accented characters when needed)
• Refined kerning in Sans styles (MONO=0)
• A few characters were missing from italic styles & stylistic sets, but these have been added (#311)
• Refined & simplified arrows

Known open issues

• Variable font behavior is a bit unpredictable on macOS / in Sketch (#317, #316, #269)
• On macOS, some linespacing metrics are different by default (#308)
• On macOS, font names with "cursive" in them are treated as italic-by-default (#153)
• A few ligatures are available in italic styles of the variable font, but not yet in the related static instances. (#320)
• More at https://github.com/arrowtype/recursive/issues. File new issues if you find them! :)

This project is nearing general release. The next beta version will likely be released here in a much shorter cycle as I aim to correct the final lingering issues that can be closed in the font itself.

Beta 1.030 – More code ligatures! (plus some fixes)

build beta v0.130 static and VFs

Beta 1.029 – Improved fractions, more stable stylistic sets between var & statics

v1.029

working on new varfont build

Beta 1.027 – Fixed OpenType features in Statics

Nothing big changes in this release, but stylistic sets & ligatures are working better in static font files.

• Mono static instances have the OpenType features that are expected
• In tests for VS Code in Windows, both Linear and Casual statics have OpenType features (stylistic sets & code ligatures).

Please see instructions for how to use the fonts & OT features in the repo's readme.

Still to fix:

• Static fonts have ligatures activated in both upright and italic styles – these should only be active in Italics
• aalt still needs to be added, to provide easy access to all glyph alternates in apps like Adobe InDesign, etc
• More code ligatures will be supported soon!
• Style linking in VS Code works well on Windows, but not yet on macOS. So, unfortunately, color themes which include Italics do not get Italics on mac.
• Other odds and ends. :) If you find something that seems to be wrong, please file an issue!

Beta 1.026 - Full charset + OpenType features added + many little improvements and fixes

Improvements in this release:

• Many more OpenType Features! Refer to the Readme for information about using these. I'm loving coding with Recursive with a few of the options here, especially because VS Code recently started support OpenType features. Options include simplified versions of several key characters (a g f i l r L Z 1), a dotted zero, and code ligatures.
• Complete character set! In previous releases, there were a few glyphs missing from full coverage of Recursive's modified Google Fonts Latin Expert glyph set. With beta v1.026, the variable font has 1154 glyphs (727 unique characters, plus alternate glyphs to make MONO & ital axes work).
• Works better in Windows: names of statics have been abbreviated more aggressively, so the statics work well on Windows, in VS Code (As tested on a VMWare installation of Windows 10. If anyone has continued issues, please file an issue).
• Many small refinements and upgrades to glyph outlines, spacing, and kerning.

Still to do:

• Support for more of the code ligatures which are drawn, but not yet included in the dlig feature.
• Make Bold & Bold Italic style linking work on Windows – currently, Italic linking works well
• Make Italic style-linking work on macOS in VS Code
• Make OpenType features work for Casual styles on Windows. Currently, these are working well in Linear styles only (they work well across all tested styles on macOS).
• Fix fi and fl italic ligatures in Static fonts. These are working well in the variable font, but need some adjusted feature code because glyph names are swapped around a bit in the static font build.

I'll be working to fix these issues as soon as possible and make another release soon!

Beta 1.022 - Variable font with (nearly) full character set: extended Latin including Vietnamese, plus many useful symbols. 'Casual' axis & tweaked instance values for weight (300–1000).

This release includes:

• Extensive improvements to the character set, including language-specific ligatures plus proper italic and mono alternates for diacritics (e.g. /iogonek.italic, /rcommaaccent.mono, etc)
• Adjust weight values in instances: Recursive's heaviest weight is now "ExtraBlack" wght=1000
• Kerning! This is still in progress, but there is a base set of superplexed kerning in the Sans styles (all line lengths are still the same along other axes, so "superplexed" type setting still works, but with nicer-looking spacing).
• The "Expression" (XPRN) axis is now renamed to "Casual" (CASL) for clarity. It still goes 0–1, and other axes stay as they were in Beta 1.019

For local use (e.g. in VS Code), use the Beta v1.020 static fonts included in this release (see current recommendations in the readme).

Coming later this month:

• Improved static fonts (these will work better than the variable font in many code editors and desktop design apps, as variable fonts are still relatively new technology and still gaining support). For the latest versions of static fonts, please see the prior release (Beta 1.019).
• Many more OpenType features. Currently, there is a very limited set of OpenType features: lira for /fi and /fl ligatures, plus dlig for a base set of code ligatures.
• Further improvements to kerning in the Sans instances.
• Any glyphs that may be missing from the intended full character set. If you find a glyph missing from Recursive that you expect in a Latin-script font, please file an issue!

To learn more about the Recursive and its variable axes, see https://recursive.design or the readme of this repo.

Beta 1.019 – 'MONO' axis, WIP Vietnamese, and Static Fonts

Monospace axis (MONO)

Recursive has a variable axis that allows you to go between fixed-width and (gridded) natural-width character spacing. Previously, this was labeled as a "Proportion" axis, with the Mono style set as the default value. Now, this has been updated to be called the "Monospace" axis, with the Sans style set as the default value, mono 0, and Mono available with mono 1. This will hopefully be a more user-friendly concept for new users and is more likely to be a standard for future natural-to-fixed-width variable fonts, in the future.

Static fonts

Variable fonts are amazing on the web, but sometimes static fonts are useful, too.

• If you're using fewer than about 8 font styles of Recursive on a webpage, these static files will be less overall filesize than the full variable font. Note: this math changes from typeface to typeface, depending largely on the quantity and effect of variable axes in a given font.
• Currently, many design apps such as Sketch, Figma, and Adobe Illustrator have no support or limited/buggy support for variable fonts. In such cases, static fonts can be more useful.

These statics are still betas, and we will ship improved versions soon!

One more thing: Vietnamese!

• The static Mono fonts now include work-in-progress Vietnamese diacritics! This opens up coding with Recursive to anyone using Vietnamese. Rất tuyệt!

These will soon be adapted for the Sans styles and included in the full variable font.

Beta 1.016 – Improved named instance weight values

This release improves the weight values for named instances, to make sure they align to 300, 400, etc (before, "Regular" had the value of 433 due to a build issue).

Axis	Tag	Range	Default	Description
Proportion	PROP	0 to 1	0	Mono (fixed-width) to Sans (proportional)
Expression	XPRN	0 to 1	0	Linear to Casual
Weight	wght	300 to 900	300	Light to Heavy. Can be defined with usual font-weight property.
Slant	slnt	0 to -15	0	Upright (0°) to Slanted (forward, by about 15°)
Italic	ital	0, 0.5, 1	0.5	Roman (0), Auto (0.5), or Italic (1)