Open Type features in Libre Office

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Leon Gauthier
Posts: 127
Joined: Thu May 07, 2015 6:07 am

Open Type features in Libre Office

Post by Leon Gauthier »

I just learned that Libre Office now supports Open Type features. To my knowledge, the "support" is rather manual at this time; that is, the user must create font tags himself, modifying the font name by adding a colon followed by the four character code for the desired feature. For example, to get old style numbers using Calibri font, "Calibri:onum" would be entered in the font field. Apparently, all of the Open Type codes you all are familiar with are supported.

My question is: is there a program one can use to list the Open Type features of a given font so you would know what was doable for a given font without running FontCreator first? Such a routine must already exist and could be the basis of a graphical interface which could be written to streamline the process of accessing these features in an extension for Libre Office.

This is probably old news to the forum members here but I am really excited to be able to use Open Type features in Libre Office at last.
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Open Type features in Libre Office

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

MainType 8 now supports the display of OpenType features in the Font Information Panel. This allows you to easily examine multiple fonts without opening them in FontCreator.
OpenType Features.png
OpenType Features.png (6.35 KiB) Viewed 4596 times
The Microsoft Tag Registry lists the feature tags alphabetically.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
Leon Gauthier
Posts: 127
Joined: Thu May 07, 2015 6:07 am

Re: Open Type features in Libre Office

Post by Leon Gauthier »

Thanks for suggesting MainType, it seems to provide what I was looking for and much much more.

However, right off the bat, I experienced some strangeness using MainType 8.0 … The Caladea font listed in MainType jumped out at me because there was no regular listed, only italic, bold and bold italic were shown. Actually, the first face listed in MainType was obviously italic but it was identified as being regular. (see image)

I looked at the Windows font viewer and all four faces were shown and previewed there. Also, in LibreOffice, the regular font appears to be available and this text was typed using that font.

My first instinct was to find and download the font and replace the installed font but I don't think that that is really worthwhile … the font works and just seems to be incorrectly displayed in MainType.

Any suggestions?
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MainType Display.png
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Top Typographer
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Re: Open Type features in Libre Office

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

I see the same issue. The regular font displays correctly in other application.

This looks like a bug in MainType.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
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