DINishPreview v3.904
Pre-release
DINishPreview v3.904 fixes the issues with sidebearings and contour order that kenmcd identified in issue #11. The causes of the issues were varied, and mostly fallout of fixes for earlier issues that caused waterbed effect.
DINishPreview v3.902 and v3.903 were never released as testing revealed the waterbed effect in action once again.
DINishPreview v3.901 add support for Expanded to both the variable font and the generated instances, compared to v3.900. Some minor bugs in the variable fonts were resolved, such as the lower case "i" losing its dot in intermediate weights. The below writeup was updated to reflect the addition of Expanded.
As discussed in the release plans #10, here's a preview of the result of the new build process, and a massive normalisation and cleanup of almost al glyphs in support of an eventual release including a fully functional Variable Font. This preview release is intended for testing and is therefore called DINishPreview. If you think it's the best thing since sliced bread, feel free to use it for whatever you fancy, but be aware a lot has changed under the hood and issues may be lurking.
Italic has received short shrift, which will be addressed in the final release.
This release includes all widths, i.e. Condended, Mittelschrift and Expanded, with all weights from 300 to 800 as separate instances. Using the instances is recommended for word processing and the many other tools that do not (or not fully) support variable fonts. There is also a variable font (in TrueType and OpenType formats), that can generate all widths between 0.75 and 1.25, and all weights between 300 and 800. I tried it in the TBDR font animator, as well as on https://www.vartype.com/, and it seems to work as advertised, but YMMV. Some more testing has been done with the Wakamai Fondue.
Please report any issues to the Discussions section. Or success stories, if it's fit enough for your purpose!
Please note that this pre-release was not built using source controlled tools, and unlike normal releases, the attached files may be updated or even removed entirely. This preview will be pulled once the final version lands.