Need A Typeface That ONLY Has Lowercase Alpha Characters

[Chris Panny]

I'm in need of a typeface that only has lowercase alpha characters. I've found a lot that have lowercase characters assigned to the lowercase set and then duplicate these for the uppercase set. Visually they all look lowercase, but InDesign still recognizes the difference. The reason i need this typeface is I want to try an experiment with Find/Change - GREP where I can swap out uppercase characters with lowercase. (Currently, there's no direct way to do this with GREP, unless one resorts to a script.)

My idea is as follows....

Use Find/Change - Grep to target the uppercase letters via Find/Change GREP: \u

Convert these to a font (Character Style) that only has small case letters using Change Format.

Use Find/Change Grep to target this Character Style in Find Format and and convert it back to None in Change Format.

I'm not sure this will even work, but in order to test it out, I need a typeface that only has lowercase, if one even exists.

[Test Screen Name]

For this to work you’d need a font change to remap absent characters. Somehow. Well in your case you’d need font changing to identify a missing character and make it fit by changing case. Anathema to typographic control to have a function where a font error changes character, just as it would be anathema for it to deal with missing character issues by changing font…

[rob day]

(Currently, there's no direct way to do this with GREP, unless one resorts to a script.)

I assume you don't want all of the text to be lowercase and Type>Change Case>lowercase doesn't work for you?

[Jongware · Accepted solution]

It won't work.

Yes: you can use a font with all-lowercase characters, and even one that indeed does not contain actual glyphs for the uppercases (which only happen to look like their lowercase version) but internally "re-uses" the glyphs from the lowercase for those same uppercase.

But that's where the fun stops.

The interface between a font and InDesign goes something like "hey, buddy, got some outlines for an uppercase character with code U+xxxx for me" >> (font looks in its own internal list, finds none, and hands over the outlines for its lowercase instead) "here ya go pal" >> InDesign (not noticing it got the outlines for quite another U+yyyy character instead) "gee wow thanks, mister!"

The character code for a "R" may look like "r" on your screen but that's about all. Remember that for other fonts it may look like "R" or "R" or even "R" -- as far as InDesign is concerned, the character code stays unchanged, and changing the font for an R to Wingdings does not change its underlying code from U+0052 to U+2600 ☀.

[Chris Panny]

Thanks for the responses.

Test Screen Name - I see what you mean about remapping.

Rob - No, I didn't necessarily want to change all instances of uppercase characters to lower, just specific ones that I was targeting via GREP.

Jongware - I did find a typeface (Dodo Pop) that only had lowercase but the fun stopped pretty quickly like you said. My thought was that this would force (remap) uppercase to lower and then it would be an easy switch to ditch this font and go back to what I was using. So much for me being a trendsetter.

That said, it's surprising/disappointing that GREP doesn't provide a way to do this.

[rob day]

Why can't you use a script?