Glyphs panel behaves differently for COLRv0/1 spec color fonts
Illustrator has been supporting COLRv0/v1-spec color fonts since early last year, which has been great to use, but lately I have been wondering if one feature of the Glyphs Panel is more a bug than intended.
When using a static COLRv0-built font, the Glyphs Panel is filled with separate "layered" characters of each glyph in black/white. With a high amount of characters this leads to an extremely cluttered panel.
When using one of my own COLRv0 designs, I noticed that while the static version has all these extra layers (see the images attached), a variable COLRv0 font doesn't preview any of these layers and shows a clutter-free panel. The same happens with static vs variable COLRv1 fonts.
Although Adobe doesn't have any variable COLR-spec fonts in the fonts library, fonts such as Zebrawood (https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/zebrawood-color) can be used for reference. For a Variable COLRv1 font one of Google's color fonts can be used as reference, such as the COLRv1 font Nabla (https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Nabla).
The source of all these extra glyphs is Illustrator probably seeing the deconstructed layers of the color font as separate characters. SVG Color fonts of course don't have this issue and behave correctly.
Is showing all layers as separate glyphs (in a static COLRv0/1 font) vs showing none (in a Variable COLRv0/1 font) in the glyphs panel intended or a bug?
Typearture
shared this idea
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Typearture
commented
Nabla indeed works fine, as it's a Variable (color) font. There are however no open-source Variable COLRv0 *or* static COLRv1 fonts I know of (or in the Adobe Fonts library). So I couldn't include comparable fonts for you to test easily.
The issue only persists in static (COLRv0/1) fonts, such as Zebrawood / Rosewood color. (these are both COLRv0 fonts, but when I test with personal COLRv1 designs the same issue happens).
https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/rosewood-color
https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/zebrawood-colorSVG Color fonts such as Juma (https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/juma) work as expected.
Thanks!
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I check the variable Nabla font and it looks fine for me. Are you sure v1 fonts have the same problem? Or do you mean v1 ones are OK, but v0 only are flawed? If Nabla misbehaves for you as well, can you share a screenshot and the full specs of your computer, please?
