Re-posting this issue with more screen shots. Variable weight fonts will work 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, they do not and give you incorrect output or unusable output, with no error warnings. This example had the first PDF output substitute the blocky serif font Bitter with another font, without any warnings or errors. The second PDF output has the correct font, but the letter forms have issues at the vertices, which make them untrappable. Converting them to outlines and then merging the path objects is the only way to get correct outlines of the charcters.