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OpenType Numerals


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hello,
I might be wrong (I've just started testing it) but it seems to me that the different styles of numerals are missing from the the OpenType panel.

OT fonts often offer different sets of numerals, as lining and oldstyle figures, each in both proportional and tabular spacing. In the OT panel you included the superscript and subscript numerals, but not the rest. Even numerators and denominators should be included, they  usually have the same outlines as the superscript and subscript but they are placed at a different height. 

Thanks,
Riccardo

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The choices offered in the Character panel will vary according to the OpenType features included by the font designer.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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1 minute ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

The choices offered in the Character panel will vary according to the OpenType features included by the font designer.

Even so, it sometimes requires clicking on the show all features  (or whatever it is called) button to access features in the font but not displayed to turn on certain features.

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2 hours ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

The choices offered in the Character panel will vary according to the OpenType features included by the font designer. 

Well,  I see. You have to click ‘show all the font features’ at the bottom of the Typography panel.

813913527_ScreenShot2018-09-28at15_42_22.png.26df7991a09c2b29672db2a534363ecb.png

However, I think there is a bit of confusion in this panel.

Not just that you mixed ‘normal’ typographic features like converting a word (or a group of words) into capitals, with the actual OpenType features (but this might be something that boders only me), but also because the panel always show all the OT features as available even when they are not.

The screenshot below shows the Typography panel of a typeface that includes neither Stylistic Alternates nor Stylistic sets (nor ‘All alternates‘ that I frankly don't know what refers to – is it an OpenType feature? Which one?). As you can see the panel seems to show that such features are included. If I click ‘Stylistic Alternate 1’ nothing will happen (as if I click the rest) but this makes a lot of confusion in the user who s trying to understand whether or not some OT features are included in the typeface.

794885368_ScreenShot2018-09-28at15_48_44.png.0e194aaf1d8c58e50971aac2d7e5a1e7.png

 

Thanks,
Riccardo

 

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36 minutes ago, Riccardo O said:

Not just that you mixed ‘normal’ typographic features like converting a word (or a group of words) into capitals, with the actual OpenType features (but this might be something that boders only me), but also because the panel always show all the OT features as available even when they are not.

The screenshot below shows the Typography panel of a typeface that includes neither Stylistic Alternates nor Stylistic sets (nor ‘All alternates‘ that I frankly don't know what refers to – is it an OpenType feature? Which one?). As you can see the panel seems to show that such features are included. If I click ‘Stylistic Alternate 1’ nothing will happen (as if I click the rest) but this makes a lot of confusion in the user who s trying to understand whether or not some OT features are included in the typeface.

The panel is called "Typography" and not "OpenType" to reflect that it can contain some features not implemented by OpenType. For example, if the font supports Small Caps as the OpenType feature, then we use it, otherwise we fall back to replacing lowercase letters with scaled capital letters. All Caps fits in here because it is done dynamically, which means it can be applied as a part of a text style, for example if you want headings in CAPITALS, or want to use it for emphasis or something in a character style. So it works in a different way to Text > Capitalisation > Uppercase, which makes a one-off change that can't be in a style.

We don't implement Stylistic Alterates or Stylistic Sets like that. Either those come from the font, or else there is some bug that means the panel isn't reflecting the current font correctly.

All Alternates is the OpenType feature 'aalt', or "Access All Alternates". See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/features_ae.

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21 minutes ago, Dave Harris said:

For example, if the font supports Small Caps as the OpenType feature, then we use it, otherwise we fall back to replacing lowercase letters with scaled capital letters.

You touched an important point. How can I know whether or not a certain type includes the small caps looking at the Typography panel? Because, for instance, I want to use the small caps only in types where the type designer actually designed them. The scaled letters are always wrong, too light and too narrow.

The same thing goes for all the rest of the OT feature. I need to try them, to click on the buttons and see if there are changes in the text.

The typography panel does not show anywhere if a certain feature is included into the typeface. Am I right?

 

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For something so important all Operating Systems seem to fail at providing relevant and useful information about fonts. Over the years I have used a number of font utilities which were also lacking. Makes me wonder and makes me a little sad that information like Old Style Numerals or Small Caps isn't readily available to us in all programs.

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.

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3 hours ago, Riccardo O said:

You touched an important point. How can I know whether or not a certain type includes the small caps looking at the Typography panel? Because, for instance, I want to use the small caps only in types where the type designer actually designed them. The scaled letters are always wrong, too light and too narrow.

@Riccardo O You are so right!

iMac 27" with macOS Mojave (German)

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3 hours ago, Riccardo O said:

You touched an important point. How can I know whether or not a certain type includes the small caps looking at the Typography panel? Because, for instance, I want to use the small caps only in types where the type designer actually designed them. The scaled letters are always wrong, too light and too narrow.

They are listed in italics. For example, my Windows Arial has Standard Ligatures, Superscript, Subscript, Ordinal, All Caps, and Case Sensitive Forms in italics, so those are all synthesised. The others are from the font.

 

3 hours ago, Riccardo O said:

The same thing goes for all the rest of the OT feature. I need to try them, to click on the buttons and see if there are changes in the text.

The Typography panel includes a preview of the effect of each feature. You can see how it will change the text without applying it. We default to hiding features which will not have an effect.

 

3 hours ago, Riccardo O said:

The typography panel does not show anywhere if a certain feature is included into the typeface. Am I right?

No; see above.

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The typography panel is a marvel with its previews and the cursive mentions of 'unsupported' features. Just one question: how can 'All Caps' be not supported by any font that has at least the Latin alphabet in lower and upper case? I mean: the caps are surely there and there is no OpenType feature 'All Caps'. Or is it intended to be read as the feature 'Titling Alternates'?

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10 minutes ago, TomGerritzen said:

The typography panel is a marvel with its previews and the cursive mentions of 'unsupported' features. Just one question: how can 'All Caps' be not supported by any font that has at least the Latin alphabet in lower and upper case? I mean: the caps are surely there and there is no OpenType feature 'All Caps'. Or is it intended to be read as the feature 'Titling Alternates'?

I do believe that All Caps is simply a case operation.

It would be nice if the Italics was also carried into the appropriate locations within the paragraph style dialog. But other than that, I'm pretty happy with how Affinity applications report and use OT Features.

Oh. One last "I would be happier if" thing. I would like to be able to resize the Typography panel.

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Just now, TomGerritzen said:

I do believe that too. Which is why All Caps should never be in italics. And I am staring at it:

But All Caps isn't an OpenType Feature. So it is "synthesized" and properly Italicized...assuming I am correct about why it is in italics. But it isn't an OT feature itself.

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I get what you mean, but Dave Harris wrote: 'They are listed in italics. For example, my Windows Arial has Standard Ligatures, Superscript, Subscript, Ordinal, All Caps, and Case Sensitive Forms in italics, so those are all synthesised. The others are from the font.' Capitals are "from the font" and as such not synthesized.

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Yes. Synth is italicized in the Typo panel. Non-Italicized are OT features a font contains.

There is one (two, perhaps) deviation from this Italic/Non-Italic listing of features that in most all cases means nothing. That is Ligatures. This function will happen on the fly if there are ligatures properly encoded in the font but has no ligature OpenType code.

One could argue that because it is a casing operation (this is my assumption here) that it should be italicized. And maybe that is true...if the assumption is correct. Dave will need to weigh in on this.

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I agree it can both ways, depending on what is regarded as a feature. Being very strict (and I'm not, really) 'All Caps' shouldn't be in a list of OpenType features, because it isn't an OpenType feature. But the Panel is titled 'Typography', and capitals are definitely a part of that.

In the end capitals are important, and a bit of italic text never killed me.

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7 minutes ago, TomGerritzen said:

...

In the end capitals are important, and a bit of italic text never killed me.

Love that line.

Edit to add. All this poking around at caps, what is italicized and what not produced a bug. So hey, all is good here, too.

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14 hours ago, TomGerritzen said:

I get what you mean, but Dave Harris wrote: 'They are listed in italics. For example, my Windows Arial has Standard Ligatures, Superscript, Subscript, Ordinal, All Caps, and Case Sensitive Forms in italics, so those are all synthesised. The others are from the font.' Capitals are "from the font" and as such not synthesized.

Most of the others use characters "from the font" too. Ligatures, for example: we don't combine outlines somehow, we just replace the f and i characters with the fi ligature character U+FB01, from the font. So "synthesised" isn't about whether the character comes from the font. It's about whether it uses a rule defined by the font.

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On 9/28/2018 at 8:58 PM, Dave Harris said:

They are listed in italics. For example, my Windows Arial has Standard Ligatures, Superscript, Subscript, Ordinal, All Caps, and Case Sensitive Forms in italics, so those are all synthesised. The others are from the font. 

Thanks. Now it's clear.

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