Inter 4

[MonsterDeveloper]

Description

Recently a new major version 4.0 of Inter typeface was released.

I believe fontsource should update the font-files accordingly to use the latest version.

[ayuhito]

This has been suggested multiple times in the past and we've denied it as we mirror Google Fonts 1:1 programmatically and want to reduce the maintenance burden on our end.

However, I think there is enough demand from users to justify hosting a separate branch for Inter 4 until Google catches up. I suggest a new package Inter 4 which will be the manually maintained version for the font, whilst the original Inter package will continue to mirror Google Fonts. That being said, it'll be up to the community to maintain future updates if that is the case.

The downside is that our custom packager doesn't support variable fonts nor does it subset fonts so the end user will be getting 100kb WOFF2 files per weight. It would help a lot if fontsource/fontsource#39, fontsource/fontsource#728 and fontsource/fontsource#730 were to be resolved but they are huge undertakings.

Also worth tracking google/fonts#3429 which has discussion from the Google team to handle it soon.

[shyakadavis]

Hello, @ayuhito,

We programmatically mirror Google Fonts 1:1.

Does this mean that with the resolution of google/fonts#3429, future installations will automatically be of Inter 4?

[ayuhito]

Depends on how Google approaches it. If Google publishes a new family called "Inter 4" to prevent regressions, then Fontsource will have a new package that users will need to migrate to. If they update the original "Inter" family instead, our existing package will reflect that too.

[shyakadavis]

From Marc, they decided to stick to the original name.

The answer is in, we're not going to rename the family.

rsms/inter#678 (comment)

If they update the original "Inter" family instead, our existing package will reflect that too.

Thanks. I guess all we have to do is wait for them to publish, right?

[ayuhito]

If that's the case, then yes we just have to wait for a release.

Note that the update will look like a normal patch release on Fontsource, but at least for users who don't like the changes, they can pin their package versions 👍

[kairader-remo]

Outside of manually checking Google Fonts, is there a way to know when the new version is published?

[shyakadavis]

@kairader-remo

The closest to a date I could was Marc's comment:

Family should land on the Google Fonts website in approximately two weeks.

google/fonts#3429 (comment)

[shyakadavis]

Hello 👋 (Sorry for the noise)

Am I correct in assuming that the new release 5.0.18 -> 5.0.19 effectively upgrades the version? (Couldn't find a place to manually check the Google version)

Noticed that in the upgraded packages there was @fontsource/[email protected].

[ayuhito]

It has not been updated to Inter 4 yet. This is an unrelated update.

You can see here that it is currently in sandbox. Once it is moved to production, we should then be able to mirror that.

[shyakadavis]

google/fonts#3429 (comment) 🎉

[ayuhito]

Released in d76f3eb.