Public-Sans: Feature: Include variable woff2 files

[andersnoren]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Right now, Public Sans only includes variable TTF files. woff2 files have smaller file sizes and load faster.

Describe the solution you'd like

Release a variable woff2 version of Public Sans.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct.
• I checked the current issues for duplicate feature requests.

[docguytraining]

Is there a way to vote for this feature request?

[chloe-pfr]

Is there a way to vote for this feature request?

@docguytraining It's unfortunately unlikely that the original designers will be releasing a new version of this font any time soon for ...erm... reasons.

The better solution than waiting for a new official release is to either look for a fork that addresses your immediate concern, or simply convert the Variable TTF from the current release to WOFF2 on your own. Parts that are Libre Franklin are SIL OFL, and PS is CC0, so you're good to make the changes you need.

There are web tools, but I've yet to see any that handle variable fonts particularly well. I would recommend either using fonttools, specifically pyftsubset or glyphhanger to do the conversion. I personally prefer pyftsubset, but YMMV.

Once you get the tools set up (pip install fonttools brotli), the command is basically pyftsubset public-sans-roman-variable.ttf --flavor=woff2 --output-file=public-sans-roman-variable.woff2, updating the actual file names to the ones from the release. Note that you need brotli to convert into WOFF2 as the size savings is because WOFF2 is a Brotli-compressed format instead of Gzip.

I hope this helps!

[annepetersen]

Appreciate the assist here, @chloe-pfr. At a quick skim, that all looks correct.

I'm the current lead of USWDS (where Public Sans was created), and can confirm we don't have new releases of Public Sans in our current roadmap. But I'm also very glad to hear y'all still have interest and methods of working with it.