v1.5.0

Features

• It is now possible to build a specific instance or instances with the -i/--interpolate option. This takes an optional regular expression that is matched against the instance "name" attribute in the designspace document.
  E.g.: -I "Noto Sans Bold"; or -I ".* UI Condensed" (#410).
• Added --designspace-path option to tell fontmake where to save the designspace file generated by glyphsLib (#410).
• Added --master-dir and --instance-dir options to control where to save the UFOs generated when the input is a .glyphs file. These options also accept a special string {tmp} which to save the UFOs in a temporary directory, cleaned up automatically after the binary fonts are built (#423).
• Added two new mutually exclusive options: --output-path, for when the output is a single file (e.g. a variable font, or a single static font), and --output-dir, which can be used for any sorts of outputs. The folder is created if it doesn't already exist (#422).
• The --interpolate-binary-layout option now takes an optional argument to customize the location of the binary masters used to interpolate the GPOS table using varLib (#422).
• Decomposing glyphs, removing overlaps, and converting curves to quadratic are now performed by ufo2ft preprocessor filters. The output produced is the same. The FontProject class methods decompose_glyphs, remove_overlaps and conver_curves are deprecated and will be dropped later (#440).
• Added --cff-round-tolerance option to control rounding of float coordinates in CFF table (#440).
• The --kern-writer-class and --mark-writer-class options were removed, and replaced with a generic --feature-writer option, which allows to load any ufo2ft (or compatible) feature writer class. Note that ufo2ft now also allows to store these feature writers' specifications inside the UFO lib. The fontmake command-line option overrides both the default ufo2ft writers and those stored in the UFO lib.
• fontTools.designspaceLib is now used to parse the input designspace file. The current version removes any kind of guessing about the axes and requires the presence of an explicit <axes> element, containing a list of <axis> sub-elements, each defining the axis name, tag, minimum, default and maximum location, and optional <map> sub-elements. The default master is expected at the intersection of all default values for each axis.
• fontmake's internal UFO to OTF compiler ufo2ft was updated to version 2.0, and includes a long list of new features and bugfixes, which transitively benefit fontmake as well. Read the full changelog here:
  https://github.com/googlei18n/ufo2ft/releases/tag/v2.0.0

Bugfixes

• Fixed issue when input ufo path has a trailing "/" at the end (#393).
• Fixed issue whith FDKFeatureCompiler not working on POSIX platform (#442).

Updated minimum requirements

• fonttools >= 3.27.1
• cu2qu >= 1.5.0
• glyphsLib >= 2.3.0
• ufo2ft >= 2.0.0
• MutatorMath >= 2.1.1
• defcon >= 0.5.1