Multiple master fonts

The intention was that using multiple master fonts, a designer can generate a style of the exact width, thickness and optical size wanted, without losing the integrity or readability of the character glyphs.

Similar to the multiple master concept, this will allow custom styles to be generated from a single font file programmatically.

Adobe Type Manager (ATM) is required for MM support on Windows and the "Classic" Mac OS (9 and below).

Describing why the technology failed, a retrospective by Tamye Riggs, written for Adobe, noted: "Users were forced to generate instances for each variation of a font they wanted to try, resulting in a hard drive littered with font files bearing such arcane names as MinioMM_578 BD 465 CN 11 OP."

The multiple master font format has mostly been superseded by OpenType, which provides more support for different languages and glyphs, but does not offer the unique continuous controls for character shape.

Typically the OpenType versions of old multiple master fonts include a selection of the most commonly used combinations of axis positions.

Optical sizing in Adobe Jenson
Nine weights of a serif font, created at the company URW++ using interpolation.
A set of optical sizes developed at URW of the typeface Leipziger Antiqua. The letters become higher in x-height and more widely spaced as the point size for which they are intended decreases.
Six different styles of Skia . This typeface was prepared using an Apple variant of multiple master technology.
Overlaid weights from an unpublished FontFont typeface showing the creation of a family from the basic form.The weights were created using the computer program Superpolator, developed by Erik van Blokland.