Add OpenType editor

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Thunderhead
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Add OpenType editor

Post by Thunderhead »

instead of downloading Microsoft VOLT it would be great if FontCreator also had a feature where you could add OpenType features to your fonts and also save them as .otf fonts. VOLT just seems like something that should have been included in fontcreator from the start
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

It has been requested many times before, but it is not a simple thing to add, and its benefits are dubious. Even after many years, there are still few applications that support OpenType features, and even in those that do, not all users are aware of how to make use of them.

This Issue for OpenType support in OpenOffice was started in 2003, and has 175 votes, but still no target milestone.

Adding OpenType Features is not too difficult if you're determined. Once you have written the script, it is a relatively quick process to add the same features to other fonts. I have added several features to most of my fonts.

The bottom line is that this feature would take a lot of programming effort, that is hard to justify for the small percentage of FontCreator users who would really like to have it.
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by William »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:Even after many years, there are still few applications that support OpenType features, ....
Which is somewhat surprising. It is not as if it were a situation of "no such fonts unless there are applications to make use of them and no such applications unless there are fonts to use in them". The fonts are available. It really needs a budget application such as PagePlus from Serif at http://www.serif.co.uk to introduce OpenType support. Bhikkhu Pesala, myself and others have suggested that to happen, yet it has not happened so far, with no feedback about the request as far as I know.

In my opinion, a budget price software program with OpenType features support is needed: it need not be a sophisticated desktop publishing program, something like Microsoft WordPad with the OpenType font support added would be good to start. I have tried making an OpenType font with automatic ligature substitution using VOLT, yet have no application in which to test whether the font works properly, so I am stuck.

Also, some of those applications that do support OpenType only support OpenType at a limited level. For example, only being able to access one alternate glyph for a character even if the font offers more than one alternate glyph for a character.

I wonder why there is no great progress with implementing OpenType. Lots of computer application users regularly use a variety of fonts when preparing documents, and many of them use italic and bold options: it seems to me that if discretionary ligature substitution and alternate glyph substitution were readily available in an application then many people might well use those facilities.

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23 March 2009
Dick Pape
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Not certain I'd hold my breath until they upgrade

Post by Dick Pape »

Of course, there is already a software for those of us who use "discretionary ligature substitution and alternate glyph substitution" -- Adobe InDesign. It works, comes in at least 3 flavors and is readily available for download.
Adobe® InDesign® CS4 software breaks down the barriers between online and offline publishing. Create compelling print layouts, immersive content for playback in the Adobe Flash® Player runtime, and interactive PDF documents. With customer-inspired enhancements, powerful new features, and streamlined workflows, you can now easily deliver sophisticated and engaging layouts across media.
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Reasons to buy

Layout productivity tools enhanced
Quickly and precisely produce sophisticated page layouts with gorgeous designs using productivity tools that were created or enhanced based on the input of Adobe InDesign® users worldwide.

Professional typography enhanced
Create beautiful, sophisticated typography for any media with the power of text and table styles, text wrap control, the Paragraph Composer, OpenType® support, drop caps, and more.

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Explore creative possibilities directly in InDesign, resulting in more nuanced page layouts in less time. Powerful tools include built-in Adobe Photoshop® effects, support for Photoshop artwork in 3D, integrated drawing tools, nondestructive effects, and finer transparency controls.
Etc.

If you've noticed, too many people complain that Microsoft has complicated MS Word over the years to the point that users won't upgrade as the new features aren't worth the cost. (I wonder how many of us have Word 2007?) So add some complicated alternate glyph rules and listen to the feedback. (Current price of MS Word is $229 so you're a third of the way to InDesign anyway.)

New technology is web based, not print based, so you can't use glyph substitution features online. If Microsoft had a large investment in Pro-type fonts you might see it later rather than never.
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

That's a good Keynesian analysis (or is it a Dickensian analysis :) ) — if it was really needed we would have it by now — simple supply and demand. I am inclined to agree. I don't think we will see it any time soon in PagePlus — there is just not enough demand for such advanced typesetting features. The majority of users think a small cap is a hat that doesn't quite fit, and a ligature is some kind of tourniquette.

Its only fontophiles who talk about such things as kerning, glyph substitutions, swashes, and optical margin alignment, and please don't even mention the Private Use Area — they will get the wrong idea entirely.
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Although sad but true, your message put's a smile on my face :lol:
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William
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Re: Not certain I'd hold my breath until they upgrade

Post by William »

Dick Pape wrote:Of course, there is already a software for those of us who use "discretionary ligature substitution and alternate glyph substitution" -- Adobe InDesign. It works, comes in at least 3 flavors and is readily available for download.

...
Full from US $699.00
Well, the following page has "Full from £684.25" for the United Kingdom.

https://store2.adobe.com/cfusion/store/ ... &loc=en_gb

I suggested a need for a budget price software program.

However, how many alternate glyphs for a character will it support? It is not unreasonable to have several alternate glyphs for some characters, for example, lowercase g in a script-like font.
New technology is web based, not print based, so you can't use glyph substitution features online. If Microsoft had a large investment in Pro-type fonts you might see it later rather than never.
Glyph substitution online. That is an interesting idea.

I did suggest, in the following post, an idea of mine, named Alternate Glyph Selectors, that could be applied to do that.

viewtopic.php?p=6648#p6648

In order to become widespread the codepoints would need to be added into regular Unicode and then the idea implemented. A problem for use online would be that browsers that were not able to handle Alternate Glyph Selectors might display a .notdef glyph for an Alternate Glyph Selector, so there would be backward compatibility problems. However, for use with some web pages and emails, Alternate Glyph Selectors could be good.

William Overington

24 March 2009
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by William »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:The majority of users think a small cap is a hat that doesn't quite fit, and a ligature is some kind of tourniquette.
Well, lots of people regularly use a variety of fonts and are accustomed to the concepts of italic and bold and bold italic. That was not the case, say, twenty years ago.

People are not as ignorant as some people try to make out. Some of the media does dumbing-down. Years ago, people who read the ingredients lists on food packets were often regarded as strange, now lots of people regularly do it. Times change.

The world wide web has been around since the early 1990s. It only became widespread in the middle 1990s. I remember in about 1996 seeing a van with a web address on the side of the van, stating that it was a world wide web address. Since then I have seen lots of vehicles with web addresses on them, yet never since any statement that it is a web address. Lots of people now know that it is a web address rather than an email address. They also know that if there is a @ character in it that it is an email address.

It might well be the case, if the facilities were to become readily available, that things such as glyph substitutions, swashes, and optical margin alignment would quickly become widely used and mainstream. Kerning is widely used already.

As for the Private Use Area, well, as I understand it, the Private Use Area arose because of compatibility with a previous character set from the Far East where it was used for people to put their individual signature characters into a font. There is no reason why the Private Use Area should not be more widely used. For example, Scanahand puts a signature in the position of the ^ character, it could be put in U+E001 for example. Now I accept that putting the signature in U+E001 rather than in ^ would make use of the siganture with WordPad not be so convenient and that use of the signature with Paint could be impossible unless WordPad were use to assist the process, so the signature in ^ is a practical matter. I am just suggesting that if Scanahand had an option button that the signature went into U+E001 then the Private Use Area would be used in a mainstream manner and I am suggesting that if fonts had the signature in the Private Use Area then users of computers using, say, Microsoft Word would quickly get used to the idea of the signature being in the Private Use Area.

William Overington

24 March 2009
JC
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by JC »

You can test ligatures of your font in Windows if you "install files for complex scripts..." in the Languages settings in the Control Panel. After that you'll see ligatures inside Notepad, but still NOT in Word 2007. (That fix is for Windows XP. Vista's Notepad shows ligatures out-of-the-box). Curiously, Calibri, the default font in Word 2007 has ligatures that Word cannot display though Notepad can.

You could also test ligatures using a web page viewed in Firefox 3.0. Here's a sample web page for it (Copy the text into notepad and save it as, say, tetsfont.htm. (change the font size anyway you want to):
The CSS 3 command text-rendering: optimizeLegibility makes the ligatures

====BEGIN HTML CODE (COPY FROM NEXT LINE)====
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Test Ligatures</title>
</head>
<body>

<p style="text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; font-family: name of your font; font-size: 40px;">
Try difficult, affliction <== Type your text string here
</p>

</body>
</html>
===END HTML CODE (COPY UPTO LINE ABOVE)===

Thanks.

JC
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by William »

Thank you for your post.

I have now installed Firefox 3.0.8 and have achieved good results.

viewtopic.php?p=11268#p11268

Thank you.

William Overington

13 April 2009
Fred Goldman
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by Fred Goldman »

I agree, I would rather not see programming effort go towards implementing OpenType features. FontLab spent a lot of programming effort implementing OpenType features and so far it's practically useless. It is very limited, and worse yet, it isn't compatible with the more advanced OpenType editors like VOLT. So if you started spending type preparing some OT features and then decided you wanted to add a more advanced feature (like positioning) you will have to start from fresh.

The one thing that would be nice is if it would be possible to kern in FontCreator using the OT <kern> feature. Kerning in VOLT is no fun and it could be much easier if FontCreator would implement it. Of course, it should be compatible with VOLT.
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by opeter »

Dear High-Logic team,
will there be OpenType CFF support in the future version(s) of FontCreator? I would really like to save .otf fonts.
Thanks for any response.
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by Erwin Denissen »

It will most likely be added to FontCreator 7, but please don't to make firm plans based on this information.
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opeter
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by opeter »

No problem. Thank you for your answer. One can always hope. :D
vanisaac
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Re: Add OpenType editor

Post by vanisaac »

Erwin Denissen wrote:It will most likely be added to FontCreator 7, but please don't to make firm plans based on this information.
I will be purchasing a new license when it happens.
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