Typophile

Support for advanced OpenType features: prognosis?

Joel Kalvesmaki

Greetings,

I am responsible for overseeing the development of a new font for use to scholars. The optimal design of this font requires some complexity in options for glyph substitution, repositioning, and so forth. Obviously, to do this would require OpenType.

What is the prognosis of software development for advanced OT features? It is wonderful to think that our publications department, which runs InDesign, can use these features, but we cannot expect our scholars—the ones who most need to use this font—to have anything more than a word processor such as Microsoft Word.

Is anyone keeping track of programs that support or intend to support advanced OT features? Thanks,

jk

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Nick Curtis

we cannot expect our scholars—the ones who most need to use this font—to have anything more than a word processor such as Microsoft Word

I would hope that you wouldn’t expect scholars to design their own documents, which is a task best left to designers. On the other hand, if all your scholars have access to is Word, then the only fonts they should have access to are Windows 95 format PS fonts — at least that opens a wide Unicode range to them.

Joel Kalvesmaki

Indeed, we do not want our scholars to design the documents. We want to take charge of that. But scholars will be respon

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