Opentype: Contextual alternates not working properly

[rumo]

Hi guys,

I am experiencing a weird behavior of Publisher with a preproduction font that lays heavily on the contextual alternate Opentype feature.

The problem: The font is valid and works fine in Indesign CC 2021 and the Typeface font manager as well as on fontdrop.info. However, when I turn on the contextual alternatives in Publisher, all of them are rendered except for the ones related to the lowercase "i" (like "is", "in" etc.) . See first screenshot for Publisher (blue), second for Indesign CC (black).

I am able to reproduce the issue. Please note that I can only provide the font file directly to the support staff.

Cheers,
Johannes

Latest version of Publisher
macOS Mojave (latest)
Hardware Acc.: On

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, rumo said:

The problem: The font is valid and works fine in Indesign CC 2021 and on fontdrop.info. However, when I turn on the contextual alternatives in Publisher, all of them are rendered except for the ones related to the lowercase i. See first screenshot for Publisher (blue), second for Indesign CC (black).

The InDesign sample looks very smooth except for the ‘we’ sequence. Is that how it’s designed to look?

[rumo]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

The InDesign sample looks very smooth except for the ‘we’ sequence. Is that how it’s designed to look?

Of course not ;). It is a pre-production version and some joints still need to be smoothed out. But that is not related to the problem I have with Publisher.

[kenmcd]

3 hours ago, rumo said:

The problem: The font is valid and works fine in Indesign CC 2021 and on fontdrop.info. However, when I turn on the contextual alternatives in Publisher, all of them are rendered except for the ones related to the lowercase "i" (like "is", "in" etc.) . See first screenshot for Publisher (blue), second for Indesign CC (black).

What language is the text set for?

What happens when you change the language to something else?

 

[rumo]

14 hours ago, LibreTraining said:

What language is the text set for?

What happens when you change the language to something else?

 

The text is set in German, and nothing happens when I change the language.

Also, since the font only works in Indesign CC when the Adobe World-Ready Paragraph composer (aka. global) is activated, I thought that there might be something similar in Publisher. But I clicked myself through all options in the glyphs, paragraph and text box panel, without solving the issue.

[Jon P]

If you want to supply us the font here I'll have a look at it

Thanks

[thomaso]

20 hours ago, rumo said:

fontdrop.info

@rumo Wow, what a tool! Thanks for this hint!

[rumo]

My pleasure, @thomaso.

Update: The font also works fine the Typeface font organizer and also in Fontlab 7. So unless I am not mistaken (possible) it is likely to be a bug in Publisher. I hope that somebody from the tech staff sees this thread and reaches out, so I can sent them the font file for investigation.

[Alfred]

15 minutes ago, rumo said:

I hope that somebody from the tech staff sees this thread and reaches out

@Jon P from Serif QA has already done so:

3 hours ago, Jon P said:

If you want to supply us the font here I'll have a look at it

 

[rumo]

 

13 minutes ago, Alfred said:

@Jon P from Serif QA has already done so:

 

 @Alfred Cheers mate, that post got lost in translation somehow. My bad.

3 hours ago, Jon P said:

If you want to supply us the font here I'll have a look at it

Thanks

Thanks Jon, it’s on its way.

[Jon P]

Thanks for supplying the font.

We've taken a look into this and believe we are interpreting the font according to spec, but I've logged a feature request for us to add something similar to InDesigns World Ready Composer to help with this.

[rumo]

Thank you very much in return @Jon P. I appreciate that.

Maybe adding a feature similar to the World Ready Composer would solve the issue. And I have confidence that the you are interpreting the font correctly. However, neither Fontlab nor fontdrop.info nor Typeface have this feature and render the font as it is supposed to be, without any issue. What do you think about that?