[CREATE] Colorfont Workshop results

[Chris Lilley]

On Friday, June 29, 2012, 4:39:18 PM, Ricardo wrote:

RL> For that kind of functionality, one would need to make use of OpenType
RL> features, namely the Contextual Alternates feature (IIRC).

RL> FontForge allows designers to set these features within their typefaces
RL> -- BTW, with an interface that's miles ahead from the main proprietary
RL> alternative, FontLab Studio -- so making a font that can accomplish what
RL> you mention is possible.

RL> However, the problem lies on the lack of support for these features on
RL> layout and graphical tools in general. We had looked into this before,
RL> and it appears that neither Scribus, Inkscape or Gimp provide a way to
RL> work with non-basic OpenType features such as contextual alternates.

CSS3 Fonts adds suport for OpenType alternate forms. See
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-fonts/#font-variant-alternates-prop


RL> Browsers, I've read recently, look like they're on the way to enable use
RL> of these features, but it's not yet there it seems.

Firefox has supported this for a while 9 a couple of years)
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/11/firefox-4-font-feature-support/

Adobe is behind the idea as well
http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2010/09/opentype-features-come-to-the-web.html
(I understand they may be working on extending WebKit to support this)

and now IE10 has added support as well
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2012/01/09/css-corner-using-the-whole-font.aspx

RL> It's also worth noting that support for most OpenType features in Adobe
RL> software is functional, but rather flaky and clumsy to use, hidden 
RL> behind layers of opaque submenus.

Unfortunately.

RL> This is a feature we'd love to be able to use in F/LOSS tools, but it 
RL> looks like a considerable technical challenge and, from what I've 
RL> gathered from existing bug reports/feature requests, sadly not a high 
RL> priority.
I think things are looking up here.

It was a bit of a chicken and egg situation - not many fonts had these features, and web pages mostly depended on platform fonts (which didn't have these features) because downloadable fonts did not work.

Downloadable fonts are now common, so  web pages can depend on these features because the designer knows which font will be used. So there is more interest in making the opentype features available to stylistic control.

-- 
 Chris Lilley   Technical Director, Interaction Domain                 
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead, Fonts Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG
 Member, CSS, WebFonts, SVG Working Groups