The tricky business of italics

[robmck-ms]

There's a little aside in the doc:

Italic isn’t a design axis; it’s handled separately, for two reasons: first, you don’t really want people to be producing semi-italic fonts, and second, often the italic shapes of characters are quite different to the upright shapes, so it’s not possible or sensible to interpolate between them.

From a design perspective, this all makes sense. From a tech perspective, the spec does provide the 'ital' axis for those who want to go there. More importantly, the italic axis must appear in the STAT table for a font (even if the given font is a Roman) in order to tell software how the given font fits into the overall family. Essentially, the STAT table entry for a Roman tells the OS that there exists elsewhere an italic version of this font, which allows applications to nicely organize all the fonts in a family.

[davelab6]

@simoncozens

you don’t really want people to be producing semi-italic fonts

I do! :)

it’s not possible or sensible to interpolate between them.

It’s not common to have outlines that are interpolatable, today.

[simoncozens]

you don’t really want people to be producing semi-italic fonts
I do! :)

Yes, but you're sick. ;-)

More importantly, the italic axis must appear in the STAT table for a font

This, however, is more of a problem...