• Fixed a regression introduced in v3.11.1 (#1163) whereby building a static
  font from a single-master source whose only master sits at a non-default
  axis location crashed with "AssertionError: Default source not found!".
  The compatibility checker now resolves the default source only when it
  actually runs, i.e. when interpolating (#1166, #1171).

• Dropped support for Python 3.9 (EOL), fontmake now requires 3.10+.
• Added support for generating preliminary (GDEF) openTypeCategories
  for designspace/UFOs sources that lack public.openTypeCategories
  and request to use the ufo2ft propagateAnchors optional filter,
  using glyphsLib's GlyphData.xml. This particular feature requires
  ufo2ft >= 3.8.0.

• compatibility checker: allow empty glyphs in non-default sources, treated as "sparse" (non-contributing to gvar deltas) by fontTools.varLib (#1163).

• By default, no longer automatically set USE_MY_METRICS component flags for variable fonts. It's not needed if fonts are unhinted, and it can cause mismatches between glyph metrics derived from HVAR vs glyf/gvar if inconsistent across masters (#1154).
• Dropped support for Python 3.8 EOL, require Python 3.9 or greater.
• Bumped minimum dependencies:
  • fonttools >= 4.59.2
  • glyphsLib >= 6.11.6
  • ufo2ft >= 3.6.1
  • ufoLib2 >= 0.18.1
  • skia-pathops >= 0.8.0
  • ttfautohint-py >= 0.6.0

• When building from a DesignSpace file, the designspace.lib["skipExportGlyphs"] should override any such key in the UFO lib.plist according to the DS spec. We already did that for VFs or interpolated instances, but we were not when building static TTF masters (#1146).

Updated minimum dependencies:

• fonttools >= 4.54.1
• ufo2ft >= 3.3.1
• glyphsLib >= 6.9.2
• fontMath >= 0.9.4

This version also adds explicit support for the newly released Python 3.13.

• Bumped minimum depedencies:
  • fonttools >= 4.50.0
  • glyphsLib >= 6.7.0
  • ufo2ft >= 3.2.0
• The fontmake.instantiator was moved to ufo2ft.instantiator, with the same API. It's recommended that you import from the latter. The old module still works but will be removed at some point in the future.
• Fontmake can now build variable fonts with 'sparse' composite glyphs i.e. with either fewer or additional masters than their components' base glyphs, by interpolating missing sources on the fly. This works for both TTF and CFF2 variable fonts (googlefonts/glyphsLib#954).

Bump minimum ufo2ft>=3.0.1, fixes a regression introduced in ufo2ft==3.0.0 when compiling a TrueType-flavored variable font with --drop-implied-oncurves option (#817).

• Using the new ufo2ft 3.0.0, the feature writers now generate variable FEA that is compiled once per VF, instead of generating/compiling static features for each master and merge OTL tables with fontTools.varLib (provided that the masters do not have different features.fea). You can disable/force the old behavior by passing --no-variable-features fontmake CLI option (googlefonts/ufo2ft#635).
  This means fontmake now also supports hand-written variable FEA syntax when compiling variable fonts (see adobe-type-tools/afdko#1350).

• Updated minimum dependencies:

  • fonttools >= 4.48.1
    https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools/releases/tag/4.48.0
    https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools/releases/tag/4.48.1
  • glyphsLib >= 6.6.3
    https://github.com/googlefonts/glyphsLib/releases/tag/v6.6.2
    https://github.com/googlefonts/glyphsLib/releases/tag/v6.6.3
  • ufo2ft >= 3.0.0
    https://github.com/googlefonts/ufo2ft/releases/tag/v3.0.0

• Improve compatibility checker (#1052).
• Bumped minimum dependencies:
  • fonttools >= 4.47.2
  • glyphsLib >= 6.6.1
• Pinned ufo2ft >=2.33.4, < 3 in view of upcoming major update that will change compilation of variable OpenType Layout tables, so one can revert to this stable fontmake version if any undesired effects arise.