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Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:12 pm
by Karin1610
I just discovered this feature and I'd love to use it because writing with caps only my font looks a bit too tight for my taste. But it seems that Word doesn't support this - at least not by default. Not sure yet about other applications.
Is there a way to activate that feature in Word (like Kerning needs activated)?
Do a lot of programs support it at all?

Re: Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:06 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
Karin1610 wrote: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:12 pmDo a lot of programs support it at all?
I know that PagePlus X9 does, and presumably other programs that support GPOS (Glyph positioning) will too: InDesign, Scribus, etc.

I added the feature as Titling Capitals (titl) to my Pali font, and that works fine in PagePlus or LibreOffice. Scribus uses the same method as LibreOffice for rendering OpenType features. Neither are user-friendly.

I don't think Word will support this feature.
Titling Capitals.png
Titling Capitals.png (7.32 KiB) Viewed 13307 times
I am sure that Capital Spacing (cpsp) will work too if you use GPOS lookup.

Re: Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 12:11 pm
by Karin1610
Hm, it would still be good though to make it work in Word because most people that will use this font work with Word for the most part.
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote: Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:06 pm I am sure that Capital Spacing (cpsp) will work too if you use GPOS lookup.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what that means.

Re: Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 12:42 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
I mean that it will work in applications like PagePlus or LibreOffice that support Glyph Positioning (GPOS). I don't think Word has any way to use these features, but I don't have Word to test it.

Re: Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 2:05 pm
by Erwin Denissen
I'm afraid Word doesn't support it. It would be great if Word would allow us to enable more OpenType features, but for now it is rather limited.

Currently Word supports these features:

Ligatures:
  • None (default)
  • Standard ligatures (liga)
  • Contextual ligatures (clig)
  • Historical ligatures (hlig)
  • Discretionary ligatures (dlig)
Number spacing
  • Default spacing (default)
  • Proportional figures (pnum)
  • Tabular figures (tnum)
Number form
  • Default spacing (default)
  • Lining figures (lnum)
  • Old-style figures (onum)
Stylistic set
  • None (default)
  • Set 01-20 (ss01-ss20)

Re: Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 4:53 pm
by Karin1610
Thank you both. Then I guess I won't bother wasting time on it.

It's really a shame that a popular program like Word doesn't support more features.
I also don't understand at all why kerning is turned off by default. I didn't know anything about kerning before starting to get into font design and only then I realized that all that time I didn't get the best out of the fonts I used when working with Word. :x

Re: Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 5:31 pm
by PJMiller
If it is important to you then you could simulate capital spacing by defining a Stylistic Set with different spacing (and include the 'cpsp' feature for all the non retarded applications out there).

Although Word supports many different ligature sets you are restricted in which ones you can have on at the same time, :? has Microsoft never heard of radio buttons ?

There is a sort of chicken and egg situation going on here where some font designers don't include many open type features because they think 'most people will use it with Word so what's the point' and some application designers don't support open type because there are many fonts without many open type features.

But things are improving, slowly, very very slowly. :roll:

Re: Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 7:54 pm
by Karin1610
Non retarded apps .... :lol: :lol: :lol:

I'm totally sure my font's gonna be used by Word users mostly. It's an elementary school font and many (elementary school) teachers here aren't exactly computer wizards that give programs they don't know a chance.
However, you sure made a point with the chicken and egg thing, so since this is not that much additional work I might do it anyway.
Thanks for the input and also for the workaround.

Re: Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 10:07 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
Since the average Word users is unlikely to know about OpenType Features like Stylistic Sets perhaps the thing to do is to use kerning for this. At least some may know that much.

What you actually want is more generous spacing between all capital pairs. You will need 26 x 26 = 676 kerning pairs for AA, AB ... AZ, BA .. BZ ... ... ZA ... ZZ.

If anyone does not like the extra spacing, they can always disable kerning for All Capitals in headings.

Re: Capital Spacing (cpsp)

Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2017 12:49 pm
by Karin1610
Yes, that would be a way too.