I'm seeing spacing problems with some variation fonts when using the OT font functions, whereas the FT functions give apparently-correct results. Test font: AvenirNext_Variable.ttf pulled from http://www.axis-praxis.org/fonts/webfonts/AvenirNext_Variable.ttf. Compare: $ hb-shape --font-funcs ft AvenirNext_Variable.ttf Avenir [gid36=0+694|gid89=1+488|gid72=2+572|gid81=3+581|gid76=4+250|gid85=5+360] $ hb-shape --font-funcs ot AvenirNext_Variable.ttf Avenir [gid36=0+692|gid89=1+636|gid72=2+563|gid81=3+656|gid76=4+370|gid85=5+462] Looking at them with hb-view, the ft version is the correct one.