29 - Opentype features

[@tommytruong7021]

Thank you for these tutorial videos! They are very in-depth yet digestible, and have helped me a lot in the YSDN 3003 course. :)

[@softwaremaniactest4069]

These are great! Thank you.

[@jakubkwiatkowski5702]

What if I wanted to type "MAMA" with alternate M's and A's?

[@kevinking74]

Thank you for this question. For this, you would need to design at least one alternative glyph for "M" and "A" each, and then write a contextual alternate feature ("calt") that will substitute the alternative glyphs for the defaults

[@tigranbarsegyan7098]

My Contextual Alternates work only after I press the features button. But after saving and using the font in illustrator or any other programs, the alternates don't work. How is that solved?

[@kevinking74]

Ah, this is the expected behaviour in Glyphs App regarding testing your contextual alternates (calt) in the app itself. One problem with OpenType is that it is not universally supported by all programs, and even programs that support OpenType do not support all of the features with the OT spec. So it is possible that some apps will support contextual alternates while others will not. Here is a handy reference from Typotheque regarding features supported by app, with versions: www.typotheque.com/fonts/opentype_feature_support Illustrator does support calt, so there is one thing to try: make sure that when you are exporting your font, that you choose to export it as an OpenType font, with the .otf extensions. Give this a try and it should work in Illustrator and InDesign.

[@TerryVogelaar]

I can confirm that 'haag' is a Dutch word; it means 'hedge'. Our language has got a lot of words like that.

[@kevinking74]

Thank you very much for letting me know the translation of the Dutch word "haag" Terry! I really appreciate it. It is interesting to study how different languages using the same script produce patterns of letter combinations and word images in text. Dutch is a very helpful language in resolving fitting issues with double letters, such as the "aa" "ee" "pp" and other double combinations that occur. So in this way, languages can be a kind of filter to help make a versatile typeface in a script that has to accommodate so many languages.

[@TerryVogelaar]

@@kevinking74 You probably won't ever use that knowledge, but it's true that each language has its own quirks. Another example would be 'ij'; it is so common that it is considered to be 1 letter in Dutch game shows, crosswords, Scrabble, etc. while it is a very rare combination of letters in most other languages.

[@kevinking74]

@@TerryVogelaar Yes, the Dutch "ij"! It is good also that OpenType provides a localization for this character. I disagree that the language knowledge I mentioned earlier won't ever be used, in fact, I think it is very important and is leveraged by font designers to understand how to develop typefaces that accommodate all of the languages that use them.

[@TerryVogelaar]

@@kevinking74 Fair point. For us typographers, usage in different languages is very important. But I meant that you probably never need to translate 'hedge' into Dutch. The Hague, the 3rd largest city, is called Den Haag. It is actually a shorter form of 'the hedge of the count'

[@abqadri4998]

Could you please make a video about Glyphs anchors and marks’ setting especially in an Arabic font and explain stems’ naming etc.