[CREATE] OpenType features•UI research notes

[peter sikking]

hi all,

as you could have heard in my talk & at the font BOF at
libre graphics, the otf•UI project is in a precarious state
at the moment.

nonetheless I have started with a first interview with
type designers who have ample experience of building
in OpenType features. see notes of interest below.


my next step is at the typo labs in berlin in about 2 weeks:

http://typotalks.com/labs/schedule/

I will exchange thoughts there with type designers and
people who were involved in writing the OT standard.
I also hope to talk there about funding this process.


here are my notes, they will be gathered in an project
wiki when the time is right. notes have been cleared with
Ulrike for publication.

notes of interest of an interview with type designer Ulrike Rausch of Liebefonts.com

- she has many (non-typographer) users that use Word; she completely sympathises with getting OTF to all users (instead of the happy few).

- designers (non-typographers) under time pressure seem to have no time to explore OTF capabilities of a given font (or, the UI does not support this well).

- features are assigned to OTF tags in a defensive way: mainly to work around the patchy and inconsistent support in the usual-suspect applications; NOT by sound logic. this results in duplication of the same features under different tags.

- there are static features (static subs) and dynamic features (many different outputs for repeated same input), the latter bringing, well, dynamics to a font (one clear example: handwriting fonts need that human-variation vibe).

- for these dynamic features—the random feature: yes please, start support for it.

- Ulrike first plans what features she like to achieve for a new font, then figures out a way to make it happen.


    --ps

        designs interaction for creatives +
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