Hello, Here I go again with yet another kinda stoopid question : What's the difference between contextual and stylistic alternates? I am in my sixth or seven month of this really stressful learning curve towards the making of open type fonts. I know I haven't shared my ideas in the "Critique" side of here but first I want to make sure I got everything right on the BUILD side, so please, if you could share this basic info with a poor type wannabe, I'd be grateful forever. Hi from Mexico, Seneca
Contextual alternates take into account the characters on either side of the character in question. They are useful, for example, in connected scripts where certain letter combinations require different forms to make a smooth connection.
Also: contextual alternates (meaning the 'calt' feature) are intended to be "on by default". Applications which recognize this feature are expected to have it enabled by default. Stylistic alternates (the 'salt' feature, or stylistic sets, 'ss##') are expected to be discretionary, or off by default.
Captured from web.archive.org on 13 Nov 2013. view this capture