User Guide

Multiple Master Fonts
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Creation of MM Fonts in FontLab
In FontLab you can do the following MM-specific things:
1. Open any existing MM font for editing
2. Convert a single-master font to a MM font
3. Define additional axis in a MM font
4. Remove any of the axes of a MM font
5. Convert a MM font to a single-master font.
You can also use FontLab’s special feature, called Mask to Master, to
simplify the combination of several single-master fonts into one MM font.
Multiple Master Outlines in FontLab
In FontLab all outlines are multiple master-compatible from the very
beginning. Every node of the outline has a layered structure:
Node type and other options
Node position on layer 1
Node position on layer 2
Node position on layer 3
Node position on layer 4
Thus, a Multiple Master font in FontLab is not a combination of several
separate master fonts, but a single multilayered font. This means that in
FontLab it’s impossible to make master fonts incompatible, because they
are just the different layers of the same font.