Does anyone know of an application for Linux that lets me use OpenType features? I'm thinking alternate forms, swashes, dicretionary ligatures.
I would like to migrate from using windows to linux, all the things I do I can do in Inkscape and Scribus, but the OT features would be a nice touch. I'm open to learning TeX or any other piece of software as long as it's usable.
Thanks
XeTeX works fine and is quite usable.
See that in first place:
http://xml.web.cern.ch/XML/lgc2/xetexmain.pdf
Please mail me privately for specific pieces of information: fadebiaye(at)gmail.com
Good luck anyway, you've made the right choice! Welcome in the free and real world!
Scribus has no OpenType support altogether, I've seen promises for years but nothing so far. Inkscape (and any other GTK+ or Qt application) does not support user controllable features, only features that are on by default for a given script. The only remaining option is modern TeX engines, both XeTeX and LuaTeX give you full control, and you can use fontspec package which abstracts the low level stuff and provides a fine, higher level interface to both engines.
However, Linux distributions are usually a bit behind TeX developments, so I'd recommend installing TeXLive and not using distribution supplied packages.
Thanks to both of you, I'll give Xetex a spin!
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