Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Recommended Posts

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Affinity uses the Unicode definitions, and the Superscripts and Subscripts block in Unicode comprises characters in the range of U+2070 through U+209F. Calibri has 42 characters in that block according to the Unicode-based Character Map program I use, BabelMap.

I selected Unicode plus Alternates which I would assume would include everything.
If not, it should.

Users do not need a defined Unicode block, they need easy access to all the features available in the font.
Which is apparently what InDesign is showing users - as the users expect.

Calibri has 6,683 glyphs.
No one is ever going to wade through all that and find all the buried superscripts.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, LibreTraining said:

I selected Unicode plus Alternates which I would assume would include everything.
If not, it should.

I have no idea what the Unicode plus Alternates setting does, or is supposed to do, and the Help doesn't describe it that I could find.

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I have no idea what the Unicode plus Alternates setting does, or is supposed to do, and the Help doesn't describe it that I could find.

 

Appears to only work when All is selected.
It appears to be sorting the Unicode characters to put the alternates together with the base character.
So Unicode combined with OpenType Access All Alternates.
This is apparently where users are expected to discover glyphs for:
smcp, c2sc, nalt, init, medi, fina, sups, subs, liga, hlig, dlig, swsh, case, titl, etc., etc.

This thread started with discussions about what is in a font's ordinals vs. superscript OpenType features.
This is because Affinity does not provide this info, as they should.
And Adobe makes this easy, as they should.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Lagarto said:

This is how VectorStyler shows e.g. Helvetica Now Text glyph categories:

glyphs_vs.jpg.cd96111c54d0e71483a2a8c9cc175c61.jpg

On the other hand, VS does not list "Ordinals" for Minion Pro? Is this because that might be something "Adobe" specific, or require some extra knowledge while e.g. "Superscript" and "Subscript" are more generic and included in API?

That is displaying the glyph browser with categories of OpenType features - far more helpful than Unicode blocks.
The ordinals in Minion Pro only includes 24 lowercase characters.
This is just plain vanilla OpenType code - and apparently this is a bug in VS.

 

17 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Yet another way to look up glyphs: by their PostScript names, in the style of VectorStyler:

glyphsbypsnames_vs.jpg.570536abec53b09a5983708e2ceaa829.jpg

This is an app that is targeted to graphic design pros so why not. Anyway, this seems to be the only way (at least in context of this font), to get most common ordinals listed in one view.

That appears just be the glyph name inside the font.
Helpful of them to show it as another way to search, or just confirmation you have the desired glyph.
Those are just the "friendly names" which many font designers use.
They may or may not actually make it into the font.

Calibri, and Arial, and Times New Roman, etc. have no glyph names.
So take a look at one of those fonts with the VS glyph browser.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So here is my master page with the section variable...

Capture_000812.png.c995c0b6fb3af4688675e1f16e6cbaa4.png

And here is my first page with the Section Manager present...

Capture_000813.png.5c98cb5f7291851256db49cf66ff691e.png

I have created a p.style for the Section Name variable. For both it and the Body p.style the SectionName p.style is based upon, I have simply turned on the Ordinals OT Feature.

Any OpenSource/Libre font could be made to do this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

The glyphs in Times New Roman, Arial and Calibri are listed with the same names -- perhaps because of the reason you mentioned?

Then they are adding the glyph names based on the Unicode code points.
Which is very helpful. Nice feature!

 

26 minutes ago, MikeW said:

I have created a p.style for the Section Name variable. For both it and the Body p.style the SectionName p.style is based upon, I have simply turned on the Ordinals OT Feature.

Any OpenSource/Libre font could be made to do this.

Is the fake superscript Off in Preferences?  (Superscript ordinals as they are typed)
What font is this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Is this just a design choice or something that could be invoked programmatically if missing from the font? (As many fonts only have the Latin ordinals a and o marked as OT ordinal features)

The font is coded to do this...

3 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

What am I doing wrong? How can ordinal formatting be made contextual (only affecting ordinals following a number)? Or does not Lato have it?

If Lato isn't coded as is the font I'm using, you'll get whatever characters are put into the ordn feature.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

... Is the fake superscript Off in Preferences?  (Superscript ordinals as they are typed)
What font is this?

If you are referring to the preference, Superscript ordinals as they are typed, it is off.

The font is one of mine, yet unnamed as regards a release name.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Lagarto said:

Ahh -- I might have misunderstood this sentence to mean that any OpenSource font already has what it takes but you mean that it can be freely modified to be so that it supports this?

Yes, any OpenSource/Libre font can be modified, but there may be restrictions about its name.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, MikeW said:

If Lato isn't coded as is the font I'm using, you'll get whatever characters are put into the ordn feature.

Care to reveal the secret to your font design?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Ok, I see. This is a clever feature, and did not know OT fonts can do such things! So, something very useful to study!

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

Care to reveal the secret to your font design?

A lot can be done...even when it may be best to do such things on ther design surface versus in the font.

There's no secret, Walt. Here's a screen shot of the ordn feature.

Capture_000814.png.3480655e20f13fc2a90229cd646342b8.png

The first substitution is to switch from the font's default old style numerals.

The multiple sub is simply to remove a couple ligatures if present (either the st lig or the longs/t lig).

The chaining context is the real worker. There are 5 rules that utilize backtracks and what is typed/being typed. The it fires off a one of two single substitutions. One of those simply converts and single long/s to a regular /s, the other changes certain characters into the superscript versions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, MikeW said:

The chaining context is the real worker. There are 5 rules that utilize backtracks and what is typed/being typed. The it fires off a one of two single substitutions. One of those simply converts and single long/s to a regular /s, the other changes certain characters into the superscript versions.

Thanks.

That aspect seems like it coule be tricky, when considering that different languages might have different requirements for their ordinal abbreviations.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks.

That aspect seems like it coule be tricky, when considering that different languages might have different requirements for their ordinal abbreviations.

The various features can be placed in Language sections and only fire off when that/those languages are used.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Do you have your finished fonts already for sale somewhere? 

99.9% of all the fonts I work on are other people's fonts, usually just the drawing aspect. A few have used my coding, but for other OT Features.

Another fun one is arbitrary fractions...even when there are dates in the text.

Capture_000815.png.7f49d1ea99617330aaa9b6d6dfb9ed55.png

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Another fun one is arbitrary fractions...even when there are dates in the text.

Arghh... my brain hurts. 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Python is/can be used in Glyphs and FontLab. I mostly use FontCreator when I code as I love its visual OT Feature editor. But FC has no automation capabilities. 

Yes, the code becomes quite long with something like arbitrary fractions and long/s substitution. But the ordn feature is easy and relatively simple.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Lagarto said:

What am I doing wrong? How can ordinal formatting be made contextual (only affecting ordinals following a number)? Or does not Lato have it?

If I remember correctly you have Helvetica Now.
It has similar ordinals features code (similar, not exactly the same).
Try that font and see if it works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.