Typophile

Which Open-Type feature should I use?

Gabriel Figueiredo

I created a font for a school assignment a while ago, and I'm having a little trouble with Open-Type in order to make it work properly.see the font here: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Shoelace-Typefeet/465085
Since the typeface uses shoes as characters, I needed it to be like this:
Right foot, Left foot,Right foot, Left foot,Right foot, Left foot,

At first I just put all the right feet in uppercase glyphs and left feet in lowercase glyphs, so you needed to type ThIs WaY to make it work (not the best solution, but I had a tight deadline). Now I am trying to find an open-type solution to make it look right regardless of how you write, but I'm not sure about which open-type feature I should use.
I am a bit of a noob at Font Lab, so any help would be appreciated.
(and sorry if my english is a bit confusing)

Thanks a lot!

paul d hunt

use the contextual alternates (calt) feature.

John Hudson

Try the Contextual Alternates 'calt' feature.

First, I suggest you make all the default characters right feet glyphs, so that regardless of whether the user types upper or lowercase characters the text always begins on a right foot. Then make a 'calt' contextual lookup that replaces a right foot glyph with a left foot glyph when preceded by a right foot.

You need to think about what you want to happen across wordspace boundaries. Using L and R as foot indicators, do you want

RLRLR LRLRL RLRLR...

or

RLRLR RLRLR RLRLR...

If you want the first option, then your contextual substitution needs to have two contexts: when preceded by right foot and when preceded by right foot + space.

Gabriel Figueiredo

So, let me see if I got it:

1-Put Right Foot (R) on all regular glyphs
2-Create alternate glyphs (calt) for every regular glyph with the Left Foot (L) in it
3-Add a rule to replace RR by RL

Is that it?

Thanks a lot for the help/attention!

John Hudson

That's right.

Gabriel Figueiredo

It worked!
Thanks a lot!
The quote on the opentype programming tricked me for a while, but after reading some forums about opentype features I finally payed close enough attention to see how it worked

Typograph

Not Needed... you only need 2 glyphes right and left/

now... sub the first with a right foot/
if the on before is right sub current letter with left, if the letter befor is left sub current with right

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