A set of fonts that each have the same critical points marked (the curly tip of an f, the three endpoints of a T.) Extremes of "times bold here, grotesque condensed here" are marked on a page; the formatter interpolates, slowly changing from one extreme to the other.

[Update: If the two fonts come from the same family within Don Knuth's Metafont system, this is easy. In the general case, the consensus seems to be that the result would be too ugly to even try.]
-- jutta, Mar 01 1998

Fontographer http://www.macromed...cuments/tn3708.html
Tech note describing Fontographer's font interpolation. [tomierna, Mar 01 1998]

Douglas Hofstadter's FARG work is very much in this direction.
-- dean, Jan 07 2000


Typographers and designers and such use a nextgen TrueType based system called multiple master fonts. This system works by each font family haviing several dimensions (italic, bold, serif, spacing), and the user can select a font using gradiations of those dimensions (30% serifed, 20% bold, 50% italic). I believe Adobe has had a hand in pushing this technology.
-- amadeus, Mar 15 2000


TrueType was an Apple innovation licensed by Microsoft and others.

Multiple masters were an extension of Adobe's Postscript font technology. You may be familiar with a couple of them as they are included in Adobe Acrobat Reader installs.

Additionally, a program called Fontographer has had font interpolation available for quite some time.
-- tomierna, Mar 15 2000


may be in css4
-- kamathln, Jul 16 2010


I think the result would messy and distracting, even if the fonts were good.

If I'm reading something, I know that bold and italic signify something, depending on context. If the text gradually starts to become a bit bolder, then bolder yet, then less bold, then back to regular, it's just going to be annoying. Does it mean that the text is becoming more important and then less important? Am I meant to look at the boldest word as being the most important? And where exactly did it start getting bold? And where exactly does the diminishing boldness end? And if a word is just slightly italic, does that mean it's a slightly foreign word?

Some cheap print is uneven, drifting from bold to regular over several lines, and it's just uggerly and distracting.

A bold, italic [-], alas.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 16 2010



random, halfbakery