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chuck_ki
Participant
November 19, 2024
Question

Can we search on fonts for oldstyle numbes, full ligatures, true smallcaps?

  • November 19, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 632 views

I'm thinking about making the switch from CS6 and the OTF Font Folio (on old computers) to the subscription model. Access to the current Adobe Fonts catalogue is appealing, but there doesn't seem to be any equivalent of the old Font Folio manual where each font would be presented with icons indicating if there were a full set of ligatures (ff, ffi, ffl, etc., not just fi and fl) true small caps, and oldstyle figure options. If I'm typesetting a book, I can't waste time with fonts that are not full-featured. On the Adobe Fonts page it looks like we can search for fonts that have oldstyle *default* figures, but not necessarily oldstyle/lining toggle options. There seems to be no way to search for fonts that have true small caps; if I search for "small caps", I get a bunch of ancient pre-OTF hits for fonts with small caps and oldstyle figures back when they used to be relegated to *separate font*. These are bread and butter typographic features in the 21st century and it would be nice if they were easy to filter. I'm not really interested in accessing 30,000 battery drawer fonts; I'm more interested in reviewing the 250 or so that are actually able to run a marathon.

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2 replies

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Community Expert
Bobby HendersonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 20, 2024

I've made feature requests for Adobe Fonts to include a complete glyphs table for each font. I'll often visit commercial fonts stores (such as MyFonts) to look at a glyphs table of a specific typeface before adding the family at Adobe Fonts. I always check the glyphs table of any commercial type family I am considering buying.

 

Granted, it's not all that difficult to add a type family, check out its glyphs table in an app like Illustrator, and then remove the type family if it doesn't meet expectations. I still think it easier on a couple of counts to visit the online font store and see the glpyhs table there before adding the font. For one thing, at MyFonts' site their glyphs display shows all glyphs immediately. When I scroll through the Glyphs panel in Illustrator or InDesign some glyphs may be hidden in flyout menus under a parent glyph. 

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    chuck_kiAuthor
    Participant
    November 20, 2024

    This is a good idea; glyph review would help with things like making sure true small caps were there, oldstyle numbers (checking if the lowercase 1 is capital i-shaped or numeral 1-shaped), fractions, whether the quotation marks were unusably weird (like Optima), whether I like the em dash. I certainly do that sort of full review on the rare occasion when I'm *purchasing* a font. Getting creative Cloud would be like suddenly leasing thousands of fonts, and telling them apart in terms of feature set would be hard. I guess I could "review" the entire Adobe Fonts collection by testing a sample line of text that had all those things in it, for thousands of different fonts. It would be a much better service to the end user if *both* practices at MyFonts (glyphs, filters on advanced typography) were available. Adobe should be leading here and offering easy ways for advanced typographers to narrow the field based on the feature set.

    J E L
    Community Expert
    J E LCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 19, 2024

    Hi @chuck_ki, there are some ways to refine the search at fonts.abobe.com based on what's important to you. On the left panel at the bottom, check the Properties categories. You may need to twirl the “Show More” button to reveal it. Adobe doesn't seem to have that many fonts with true small caps glyphs, though.

     

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    chuck_kiAuthor
    Participant
    November 19, 2024

    Thanks, JEL. I did see this. Full ligatures are not an icon here, nor are oldstyle-lining double options, nor are true small caps. These options are all aimed at single-page, one-word, logo-type design. This might be helpful for users of Photoshop or Illustrator, but anyone who wants to delve into a rich set of special glyphs (i.e., the InDesign users) are not helped by this limited extremely set of tags. The Font Folio user's manual provided many more helpful tags, and it's unfortunate that the online version of the Folio isn't as richly described.

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    chuck_kiAuthor
    Participant
    November 19, 2024

    At MyFonts (Monotype), one can filter fonts using "Advanced Typography" filters to choose "Fractions", "Ligatures", "Numerical Alternates", and "Small Caps" and start with a subset of "marathon" type fonts that can be deployed across a nonfiction book-length text with all the complication that comes therewith. Adobe has a whole bunch of excellent typefaces that do all of this (Arno, Garamond Premier, Warnock, Minion, Kepler, etc.) and it's weird that they're not really promoting them or steering people toward richly featured fonts. If people are paying hundreds of dollars a year for Creative Cloud, it's weird that the font browsing tools are so myopic.

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