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M
mrrolf
Participant
December 17, 2008
Answered

TextLayoutcase - SmallCaps

  • December 17, 2008
  • 2 replies
  • 1232 views
One of the features that caught my eye with the new text engine was the TypographicCase you are able to set on the text. So with the TextLayout component I decided to give it a try, but I didn't get what I expected.

When I set the case to 'Upper' or 'Lower', I get the results I would expect. I set the case to 'SmallCaps', and the text doesn't change. Small caps should be the first letter in the word be capitalized, and the remaining characters be a smaller size capital character, example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps.

Do some fonts not support SmallCaps? I have tried many (but not all) fonts and get the same result.
Do I have to do something different to get the SmallCaps to work?
Does the new TextEngine not support my idea of SmallCaps?

Thanks!
This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer
Well it looks like I was confused. The definitions of the TypographicCase values we have are correct according to the OpenType spec for the tags involved.

SMALL_CAPS only changes the uppercase letters to small caps glyphs (c2sc)
CAPS_AND_SMALL_CAPS only changes the lowercase letters to small caps glyphs (smcp)

The latter is what you're looking for. It's the most common use of small caps I'm aware of, though it usually goes by the name of the former.

What we're lacking is a value that applies both tags and changes all glyphs to small caps. I've put in a request for that.

2 replies

C
colonelz8026041
Participant
December 17, 2008
Yes. The mode you can achieve in InDesign with choosing "Small Caps". With the demo layout application there is no way to get a working caps mode with "Times New Roman", but in InDesign the above mentioned mode works fine. In InDesign "OpenType All Small Caps" has no effect on that type, for instance.
A
Anonymous
December 17, 2008
Yes, TLF small caps only work with OpenType fonts with the appropriate small caps glyphs.

What you see in InDesign for Times New Roman is a faux small caps - the regular capital glyphs are used and resized. You may notice a jarring stroke weight difference between regular caps and the faux small caps. As far as I know we have no plans for providing faux small caps in TLF, but if an application wants to make faux small caps themselves the capabilities are there.
C
colonelz8026041
Participant
December 17, 2008
Seem to be not implemented in the beta release.

The only working variant in the online feature demo ( http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/textlayout/demos/) is the "Caps & Small Caps" case mode. But it has not the same effect on all fonts.
A
Anonymous
December 17, 2008
This looks like a bug. Our documentation is confused about what Small Caps should be. There's an image of small caps in the documentation for typographicCase in the CharacterFormat object that shows what you expect. But in the TypographicCase object it defines SMALL_CAPS as "Specifies that uppercase characters use small-caps glyphs on output." which is what actually happens and I think is wrong.

I'll write up a bug - thanks for catching this!
A
Anonymous
Correct answer
December 17, 2008
Well it looks like I was confused. The definitions of the TypographicCase values we have are correct according to the OpenType spec for the tags involved.

SMALL_CAPS only changes the uppercase letters to small caps glyphs (c2sc)
CAPS_AND_SMALL_CAPS only changes the lowercase letters to small caps glyphs (smcp)

The latter is what you're looking for. It's the most common use of small caps I'm aware of, though it usually goes by the name of the former.

What we're lacking is a value that applies both tags and changes all glyphs to small caps. I've put in a request for that.
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