Adobe Blank VF & Friends are a set of special-purpose Variable Fonts that are intended to render all Unicode code points using variable-spacing glyphs that are non-marking (Adobe Blank VF and Adobe Blank 2 VF) or marking (Adobe Black VF and Adobe Black 2 VF).

These Variable Fonts are based on Adobe Blank and Adobe Blank 2, which differ in that the former font includes 2,048 functional glyphs (GIDs 1 through 2048) to which all Unicode code points map, while the latter font maps all Unicode code points to a single functional glyph (GID+1). Adobe Blank uses Format 4 (Segment mapping to delta values) and Format 12 (Segmented coverage) 'cmap' subtables, and Adobe Blank 2 uses a Format 13 (Many-to-one range mappings) subtable.

These Variable Fonts map 1,111,998 Unicode code points to either ranges of 2,048 glyphs (GIDs 1 through 2048) or a single glyph (CID+1). The 2,048 High and Low Surrogates (U+D800 through U+DFFF), the two noncharacters in the BMP and in each of the 16 Supplementary Planes (FFFE and FFFF), and the 32 noncharacters in the range U+FDD0 through U+FDEF are explicitly and intentionally excluded. As fully-functional Variable Fonts, the following 'sfnt' tables are included: BASE, CFF2 (OpenType/CFF2-only), DSIG (stub; OpenType/CFF2-only), GSUB (stub), HVAR, OS/2, STAT, VORG (OpenType/CFF2-only), VVAR, cmap, fvar, glyf (TrueType-only), gvar (TrueType-only), head, hhea, hmtx, loca (TrueType-only), maxp, name, post, vhea, and vmtx.

These Variable Fonts include two axes, 'wdth' (Width) and 'HGHT' (Height). The default values for both axes is 0 (zero), meaning non-spacing in both writing directions. Both axes have a range of 0 through 1000, with a value of 1000 corresponding to a horizontal or vertical advance of 1000 units.

The following is a summary of the four Variable Fonts that are included in this project, which are provided in OpenType/CFF2 (OTF) and TrueType (TTF) forms, along with WOFF2 (WOFF2/OTF & WOFF2/TTF) versions of both forms for good measure:

AdobeBlankVF: 2,049 glyphs; GIDs 1–2048 are non-marking; Format 4/12 'cmap' subtables
AdobeBlackVF: 2,049 glyphs; GIDs 1–2048 are marking; Format 4/12 'cmap' subtables
AdobeBlank2VF: two glyphs; GID+1 is non-marking; Format 13 'cmap' subtable
AdobeBlack2VF: two glyphs; GID+1 is marking; Format 13 'cmap' subtable

Note that some environments cannot consume fonts with a Format 13 'cmap' subtable. Under such circumstances, please use Adobe Blank VF or Adobe Black VF.

To build the Variable Fonts from source, you need to have installed the Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType (AFDKO) tools. The AFDKO tools are widely used for font development today, and are part of most font editor apps.

In this repository, all necessary files are in place for building the Variable Fonts, and the build.sh file can simply be executed.

Send suggestions for changes to the Adobe Blank VF & Friends project maintainer, Dr. Ken Lunde, for consideration.