Typophile

OpenType / Alternates / InDesign / Please!

MRE

Hello,

So I am starting a book project for which I am using a very complete and well designed typeface, the files are .otf. I thought .otf meant OpenType and that's it, I just discovered the different OpenType flavored types, which I don't quite understand yet, anyway, not the point...

So I checked and my typeface is an OpenType (Postscript Flavored).

Now... I am using the Book weight, which contains all the basic characters, but not the ligatures. For the ligatures, there is the Book Alt version, which contains all the nice ligatures that I would like to use in my text treatment...

From what I understand, OpenType would contain everything in one font file, these flavored things do not, because of the 256 glyphs limit, right?

Anyway, so how would I go about setting InDesign (CS5) to automatically recognize "st ct ff fi fl" etc etc., and replace them with the ligatures from the Book Alt font file?

I know OpenTypes discussions are all over the place, but I couldn't find an answer for that specific case.

Please anyone, any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank You.

:)

Claus Eggers Sø...

Use GREP to do the substitutions.

Igor Freiberger

From what I understand, OpenType would contain everything in one font file, these flavored things do not, because of the 256 glyphs limit, right?

Both OpenType "flavours" does support 16,384 glyphs and thus must include all features (ligatures, alternates, small caps, tabular figures, etc.) in one single file. The problem here is your font file, which does not include all glyph it would contain. Maybe they are just converted Type1 files, without any additional OpenType resources.

To workaround this, you can use GREP styles and substitutions, as Clauses said. If you don't know about GREP, take a look on InDesign Help and on articles about GREP at InDesign Secrets.

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