Small caps text

[pcdlibrary]

  How can I be sure I'm using true small caps?

[loukash]

By selecting the font and inspecting the View menu > Studio > Glyph Browser.

Not many fonts do.
E.g. Minion Pro which came with the Adobe CS installation does have true small caps.

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[walt.farrell]

Also interesting that InDesign says the glyph is 309, and Publisher says G+0049.

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[MikeW]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Also interesting that InDesign says the glyph is 309, and Publisher says G+0049.

The glyph id 309 is merely the number of the glyph inside the font. i.e., it is the 309th glyph. Another font may have a different glyph at the 309th glyph location.

All glyphs have an id in a compiled font.

[walt.farrell]

48 minutes ago, MikeW said:

The glyph id 309 is merely the number of the glyph inside the font. i.e., it is the 309th glyph. Another font may have a different glyph at the 309th glyph location.

All glyphs have an id in a compiled font.

Thanks. So, what is the G+0049?

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[pcdlibrary]

3 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Yes, it is probably related to Affinity's incapability to actually render and refer a selected small cap letter in the Glyphs panel, so it shows (in addition to the Unicode codepoint for letter "h" that is physically typed) just the hex notation of actual glyph ID 73 for the lowercase "h" in this font (not for the glyph used for small capital letter H) just the codepoint for uppercase H (0049), which is probably the base for producing the small cap (even if it seems to have a separate glyph ID and codepoint). Codepoints are mapped behind names also in apps like FontLab so I think one needs to be some kind of a font expert to figure out what is actually used to represent a small cap glyph in each font! Anyways, the glyphs should be identical in Affinity Publisher and InDesign, as I created the screenshots for the former by impoting an IDML file created in InDesign.

This can get rather complicated, if we let it. Fontsquirrel.com lists 16 free small caps font families.

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, pcdlibrary said:

This can get rather complicated, if we let it. Fontsquirrel.com lists 16 free small caps font families.

But I'm curious why it matters whether you have a "true small cap", or not.

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[PaulEC]

19 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But I'm curious why it matters whether you have a "true small cap", or not.

https://designforhackers.com/blog/small-caps/ 😉

'Not too sure how many people (other than typographers) would spot the difference, but I suppose that's no reason not to get it right!

[Seneca]

23 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But I'm curious why it matters whether you have a "true small cap", or not.

From a typographic point of view it matters a lot but I agree that not everybody would miss it.

[MikeW]

55 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But I'm curious why it matters whether you have a "true small cap", or not.

 

37 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

https://designforhackers.com/blog/small-caps/ 😉

'Not too sure how many people (other than typographers) would spot the difference, but I suppose that's no reason not to get it right!

Walt, as Seneca writes, it does matter. At least as regards a quality layout perspective. Drawn SCs attempt to minimize/eliminate the visual disparity between true caps and their SC cousins.

Below, the black text uses as-drawn small caps. The magenta regular caps have been scaled down--which is what happens with faux SCs. Overlaying the cap T character are two colored rectangles. The gray the SC version of the h character, and the magenta the stem width of the faux H character.

 

[Old Bruce]

Why it matters is down to legibility, do your readers a favour and choose well designed fonts with all the necessary glyphs for the project.

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[kenmcd]

11 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Perhaps someone can shed some light on this?

The Unicode code point is always used when the character is used.
That way you can search a PDF or web page and find that text.
The glyph displayed is replaced by the shaping engine.
For example LibreOffice and Firefox both use the Harfbuzz shaping engine
Advanced graphics apps like Affinity apps and InDesign, etc. create their own shaping engines to support their more advanced features.
So basically you are always dealing with the same Unicode code point, and a different glyph is supplied by the shaping engine.

Usually small cap glyphs do not have a Unicode code point assigned.
There is no small caps block anywhere in Unicode.
Sometimes to support apps which do not have OpenType support, the font designer will put small cap glyphs up in the Unicode Private Use Area (PUA) so users can use their Character Map (of Unicode code points) to select the glyphs.
Vinyl cutters and various crafts related machines like Cricut, etc. use these "PUA" fonts.
I recently saw a crafts site advertising their big selection of PUA fonts.

They do no have a Glyphs Browser like we do where we can see all the glyphs in a font, not just those with Unicode code points.

To help users Adopy apps display the OpenType Access All Alternates (aalt) alternates in the Glyph Browser.
That is why you also see the h superior and the h small cap along with the h lowercase.

 

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

But I'm curious why it matters whether you have a "true small cap", or not.

I am sure you have done this, all designers do ...
You are out about town and you see a big sign with bad kerning. And you go, Ugh!
With your trained eye you immediately notice what others miss.
Same will happen with small caps.
Once you know what good ones look like, you will immediately notice bad ones.
Latest bad faked small caps I have seen were in a movie credits.
Too small, wrong weight, bad kerning, and being reversed made it worse.
May the curse of noticing bad small caps be upon you. 😀

 

Faked Small Caps are created by scaling the capital letter by a fixed percentage.
That is a fixed percentage selected by the application programmer.
But different fonts have different x-heights.
With larger x-height fonts the small caps also have a larger height.

Source Sans Pro
Cap Height - 750
Small Cap Height - 518 (69%)
Lowercase x-height - 486 (65%)

Cardo
Cap Height - 1410
Small Cap Height - 945 (67%)
Lowercase x-height - 900 (64%)

Times New Roman
Cap Height - 1356
Small Cap Height - 983 (72%)
Lowercase x-height - 916 (68%)

Bookmania
Cap Height - 700
Small Cap Height - 516 (74%)
Lowercase x-height - 466 (67%)

Minion 3
Cap Height - 650
Small Cap Height - 452 (70%)
Lowercase x-height - 420 (65%)
And these change as the x-height changes in Caption, SmText, Text, Subhead, and Display fonts.

So, what would be the best scaling percentage to use for faked small caps?
LibreOffice has one percentage, Word has another percentage, and Affinity apps probably have another percentage.
No good way you select that percentage, and you still have wrong stem widths (too light).
 

21 hours ago, pcdlibrary said:

How can I be sure I'm using true small caps?

I thought this would be easy.
I thought ... if the Typography Panel does not display the Small Caps option, the font does not have OpenType Small Caps.
But I was wrong, that is not true!
How can an advanced design app display fake small caps, and have no way to turn them off! Ahhhhhh!!!

I was also thinking we could have a test document with all the features in it turned on to see what is working, and not working,
but if you cannot turn-off the fakes it will not work.
Sigh. That's my two cents.

 

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[kenmcd]

@Lagarto

Not sure I completely understand your points.

First, if you can see the small cap glyph in the Glyph Browser it has been created by the font developer not faked by an application.

Second, if you can see the feature code for small caps (smcp) or capitals to small capitals (c2sc) again the the font developer has created the small caps.

Third, the glyph name suffixes are used by the font developer to organize the glyphs, and used by the font creation application to auto-generate the OpenType feature code. For example in FontLab the .sc suffix will auto-generate both the c2sm and smcp feature code. If the suffix .smcp is used it will only auto-generate the smcp code. And if the .c2sc suffix is used it will only auto-generate the c2sc code. But the font developer can use any suffix they want and then write the feature code themselves. For example I have seen .small and .sml used for small cap glyph name suffixes.

How do I determine the OpenType features supported by a font?

First thing I do is open it in the FontCreator OpenType Designer, look to see if a feature is there (e.g. smcp), and then click to open the associated look-up tables to see exactly what is being replaced. You can do it in FontLab, but it is a little more complicated and not as visual.

Some online tools and some font managers will list the features supported by just scanning to see if the code (e.g. frac or sups) is present. But this can be misleading. You may think fractions (frac) or superscript (sups) are fully supported, but in reality the font is an old conversion which only has the old legacy pre-made glyphs for ½, ¼ and the font app auto-generated the OpenType feature code for just those 2-8 glyphs. A font with full arbitrary fractions support would also be listed as supporting frac. Same situation with the three legacy superscript glyphs.

This is why I was thinking about making a testing doc where you could see if the font supported the features, but if fakes are on by default and cannot be turned-off this will not work.

The glyph browser can show you a lot if you know what to look for, but not everything is obvious, so the only reliable way is to look inside the font. Even then sometimes trying to figure-out what is going on in contextual alternates (calt) or ccmp can make you crazy. Basically you are reverse engineering code.

If the font developers would just document their fonts ! ! !  This is an ongoing problem. So I have been documenting some popular open-source font families. Calling them FOSS Fonts User Guides. First three are in various stages of being done. May add a few more before releasing them all on GitHub.

Have to disagree with you about the faked small caps, fakes are just butt-ugly. 😁

[loukash]

23 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

if you can see the small cap glyph in the Glyph Browser it has been created by the font developer not faked by an application

Yep, that's what I meant with:

On 1/27/2021 at 3:15 AM, loukash said:

By selecting the font and inspecting the View menu > Studio > Glyph Browser.

Not many fonts do.
E.g. Minion Pro which came with the Adobe CS installation does have true small caps.

That's what I consider the only true small caps, as asked in the original post.

32 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

fakes are just butt-ugly. 😁

The last time I've used fake small caps was some time in the early 1990s while it was still considered a novelty…

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[kenmcd]

OMG. No one called Source Sans Pro small caps fakes because they have no code point. In the vast majority of fonts which do have real small cap glyphs available those glyphs have no Unicode code point assigned. That is the "normal" case. The only way they do gave a code point is if the font designer decides to put them in the PUA. And there are pluses and minuses for doing that which is why not everyone does it. There are no assigned code points in the PUA so there is no way for a glyph browser or character map to categorize the glyphs as small caps. The only way to do that is to process the OpenType feature code to get the glyphs assigned. Many production fonts (like Times New Roman) have no glyph names.

On my phone at the moment so I cannot check, but I am surprised to hear you say that the Affinity glyph browser does not actually show all the glyphs (if they do not have a code point). If that is true, it is not a Glyphs Browser, it is a Unicode Character Map. Find that hard to believe and will check it tomorrow. Bad if true.

I only have InDesign installed in one virtual machine as I have cleaned all other traces of Adopy apps from my systems. Suppose I will have to take a look. I find it hard to believe they would list fake small caps in the glyphs browser. If true that is really bad.

[loukash]

40 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

On my phone at the moment so I cannot check, but I am surprised to hear you say that the Affinity glyph browser does not actually show all the glyphs (if they do not have a code point).

Source Sans has very nice small caps.
They are visible either under Glyphs or under Unicode Plus Alternates:

Those "QQ" characters (G+0369) are inserted directly via Glyph Browser and they remain small caps even if I disable Small Caps for the text frame in the Typography panel.

Other than that, folks, I admire your knowledge of the subject but even for my otherwise rather nitpicking nature it's all getting a tad too academic…

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