User Guide

FontLab 4
582
Mu l t i p l e Ma s t e r Fo n t s Th e o r y
A simple picture can describe the main idea of the Multiple Master font
format:
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If we have two contours that have the same number of points of the same
type (vector or curve), we can always make intermediate contours by
interpolation. The number of these different contours is limited only by the
precision that we choose.
Applied to fonts, this idea gives us the following:
In this picture we used two styles of the same typeface, Light and Black, as
ends and, as you can see, we have many more styles in the middle. Fonts
that are used to define end designs are called master fonts. A combination
of several master fonts into one font file is called a Multiple Master font.