Weight / Height issues on Windows, especially for numerals

[teunhompe]

Hi,

We're using Barlow in a web project and are noticing rendering issues across Chrome, Edge and Firefox on Windows. What we're seeing is height differences between normal and bold weights, for specific font sizes. For example, the number "2020" on font-size: 13px has a noticeable height difference between font-height: normal and font-height: bold, where bold seems lower/squeezed.

This effect is font-size specific. We're seeing it on 13px, and also for example on 19px.
The effect can also be observed on Google Font's preview.

It became apparent when we worked on our search suggestions, where we use bold to indicate the query characters in the suggestions. See below screenshot:

Any thoughts on what might cause this? Thanks.

[jpt]

I think Barlow is using TTFAutohint which isn't great. I'm going to add manual hinting as a TODO. Starting to consolidate issues. Thanks for reporting, all in this thread.

[jpt]

the font has been manually hinted here: https://github.com/jpt/barlow/tree/1.5
I'll post an update when I compile new binaries from the source

[jpt]

try these TTF files and let me know how it goes. https://github.com/jpt/barlow/tree/1.5/fonts/ttf

[jpt]

New TTFs to try here: Barlow1.5-RC1.zip