Today I encountered a situation where the font Roboto is not displayed correctly in CorelDraw, but OK with other applications.
The font family was downloaded from Google Fonts.
A bunch of the fonts in the Roboto family (and Roboto Slab) won't load properly in CorelDRAW 2022 at all on either my work desktop or my notebook at home. The typeface of the piece of selected text gets changed into default Arial when I try to apply certain styles of Roboto. The same happens for a bunch of other typefaces downloaded from the Google Fonts web site.
I downloaded the Roboto font family and I had issues only with normal. I went back to the site and selected each version of the font manually, downloaded them and installed the normal version and now it and all the rest of the family work.
The Slab version was downloaded as individual formats and installed they seem to work.
99.99% of users won't care. I downloaded and installed them, I did some testing and uninstalled them, they can rest on the server I have zero use for that font. Getting ugly fonts for free is still just ugly, I'll wait to use them when I'm forced into it.
You may hate variable fonts, but that doesn't mean everyone else feels the same way. I have a pretty good, growing collection of variable fonts -most of them commercially purchased. Some typefaces, such as Heading Now by Zetafonts, are "work horses" for me.
I don't think Roboto is the best looking sans serif typeface, but I don't think it's "ugly" either. I like it a heck of a lot more than default Arial. Roboto is visible throughout Google's Android user interface. I don't mind looking at it.
Now Arial is a really ugly typeface. It sucks. And the use (and blatant mis-use) of Arial is a common trait of garbage-quality graphic design. Arial is present on a lot of terrible looking signs, often artificially squeezed and stretched to fit into a given space, thanks in part to very few styles being bundled into the Windows OS.
It's easy for someone to take things too far with the variable axis settings in either Roboto Serif or Roboto Flex. But that blame falls onto the person not using type responsibly. However I will be far more quick to forgive someone taking crazy visual chances with variable axis settings than I would to forgive someone for squeezing and stretching Arial. Those people are doing that because Arial starts with "A" and it's at the top of the font menu. Or it's the default font in the application. Those users are too lazy to scroll down the font menu and pick something more appropriate. God help us if they have to go out of their way to install a font not already in the computer system. Buying commercial type? That just doesn't even figure into the picture with any of hack "designers" out there.
Don't get me going on hack designers, I don't like Roboto because I think it's ugly.
I gave up bitching about fonts because people (read designers and corporate mass production) will do what they do. As long as they either send me the font or don't whine about me billing for it I don’t care. Now I ha ve seen designers lose clients over huge bills, either for buying fonts or for having to go back to the designer for changes. That pisses und users off quickly. Those $250 changes add up quickly.
As far as ADA signage they are so expensive that on a nursing home expansion saving $15 per sign is big dollars, they'r buying huge sign counts. You get a choice of 4 fonts that look similar, I do a mock up for the client of each style, send the manufacturer an Excell and save 9 to 12 grand.
It's a very rare occasion that I ever have to leave any lettering in a sign design as live fonts. I almost always convert the type objects to curves when I am finished with the design. I do this for a list of reasons. I especially do this for any designs that need portions of it jobbed out to third party firms for specialty work, such as printing billboard faces. That way there is no need to send along any font files. I get to use the type I want to use and they can output the raw vector shapes of it.
I handle jobs, mostly print from end users who used a designer or designers. I would say 40% end up needing changes. So I need the changes done or the font.
The end user gets screwed for designer costs for those changes, by the time there's 1 or 2 they can buy the font. Since we bill time and materials most times the end user drops the designer and picks a similar looking font for the project.