Alternates e variants

[Passorolle]

Hi everyone.

For some time I started using the Affinity publisher (my previous experience is with In Design that I use without any difficulty) and for the lack of knowledge of English I struggled a little. I believe that some measures are not possible with the beta.

I write because in the Forum I did not find any questions on some tabs of the paragraph styles menu. Under the heading typography there is alternates and variant: two cards that I did not understand their functionality.

I ask: how are the variants and the alternates created?

Greetings and good things to everyone

[William Overington]

In the help system, under Typography there is included the following.

• Character variants—allows specific character variants within the text.
• Stylistic Sets—allows you to automatically apply a font's alternate characters throughout the text.

I am not sure of variants, (can anyone explain please?) but for alternates they are produced by a person making an OpenType font using fontmaking software such as High-Logic FontCreator. To make an alternate available in a font the font designer needs both to include a glyph for the design in the font and also to include OpenType code in the font so that the font knows of which particular letter the new design is an alternate. So, for example, if the font has a letter e with a horizontal line and there is an alternate design where the line is slightly angled going up from left to right, then the OpenType code needs to include information that the alternate design is an alternate of a letter e.

There is a forum for High-Logic software and you could learn how to do it if you so choose.

William

 

 

[Passorolle]

Hi William, I thank you for your answer.
In a text with dates (this is just an example of the possible variables) you will have noticed that the numbers are always larger than the characters; what I meant to ask is: is there a possibility within the same style of character, to reduce, for example of a body (from 12 to 10pt) the character of the date? or change the character from regular to italic? With InDesign everything is resolved with the Grep.
For spelling correction, how do you do it?
Greetings and good things.

[fde101]

That is not what those are for.

The functionality you are looking for does not currently exist in Publisher.

 

There is an existing thread requesting this:

 

[kenmcd]

@Passorolle

It sounds like what you are looking for is Old Style figures.
These figures match the x-height of the text and do not break the visual flow like the Lining figures.
In most general purpose fonts the Lining figures are the usual default.

Some fonts include the Old Style figures as an OpenType feature.
When that is available APub will display Figure Style in the Typography dialog which will enable you to easily change your figures.
Apparently the font you are using does not have Old Style figures available.

Some fonts designed specifically for text will have the Old Style figures as the default.
For example Vollkorn (FOSS) does this.
It includes both Lining vs. Old Style, and Proportional vs. Tabular.
It's free, give it a try.