Minion 3: Small caps italics?

[ernst_0899]

Dear fellow font users, 

with a text editor, Minion3 shows small caps italics glyphs. The otf files for Italics, however, do not list the smcp (small caps) feature (while, e.g., Minion3-Regular.otf does). With lualatex, trying to use small caps italics (\textsc{\textit{Test Text}}) works like a charm with MinionPro, but fails with Minion3, giving an error message about lack of a scit variant (LaTeX for small caps italics). Any suggestions on how to access the small caps italics glyphs (with look identical to the MinionPro ones in the text editor I have used to compare the fonts)?

Kind regards, 

Ersnt

[Bobby Henderson]

The regular upright style of Minion 3 Std Regular has 3152 glyphs while the Regular Italic style has 2690 glyphs. The italic style does not have a native small caps character set. This sort of thing is actually somewhat common with text oriented type families. Native small caps character sets will be exclusive to the upright styles while the more "cursive" italic family is confined to using the regular lowercase characters.

You can see the difference by visiting the MyFonts web site, searching Minion 3 and examining the glyphs table for the regular and italic styles there.

Unlike Minion 3, Minion Pro has italic styles that do contain native small capitals. Funny thing: the italic styles of Minion Pro have more glyphs (1864) than the upright styles (1690). But Minion Pro supports fewer languages than Minion 3. By the way, the Minion Variable Concept fonts included in Adobe Illustrator have a more limited character set (no true small capitals is one limitation).

[Matthew Williams CMH]

I have no idea why on earth they would omit the small-cap italic from Minion 3 when Minion Pro has it. I understand the historical background, but in academic works that often have 5 or more levels of head, it's not uncommon to use small caps for the smaller heads, and sometimes, those have italic in them. Yes, I could use italicized "fake" small caps, but if, as is likely, the head is keyed in upper and lower case, I end up with caps and small caps, which I, personally, think is ugly and poor typesetting. Sigh.

I don't get why Adobe does some of the things they do. Another frustrating example is that the font Alegreya available through Google has far more characters that Alegreya available through Creative Cloud. I get that there are licensing restructions, but why offer a limited character set (without any warning) for a font that's already available for free elsewhere?

[Tarun Saini]

Hi @Matthew Williams CMH,

Thanks for reaching out! I'd like to inform you that Minion 3 Italics does not include small caps, this was a decision by the designer when Minion was redesigned, as italic small caps are not commonly needed in most typesetting scenarios.

Regards,

Tarun

[ariadneremoundakis]

@Matthew Williams CMH Thanks for pointing out the disparity between the Alegreya versions, we are now updating the version on Adobe Fonts to be the same as Google's, this was just an issue of keeping up with the latest version. 

[Bobby Henderson]

I agree fake small capitals look hideous when they are artificially applied to text objects. I would rather do without a small capitals treatment with lettering set in a certain typeface if I had to click a button to crudely fake them. Native small capital character sets are one feature I usually look for when I am considering buying a copy of a certain type family.

Variable fonts can make it a little easier to fake a small capitals look; just use the weight slider to adjust the thickness of the small caps letters to look more in balance with the weight of the large capital letters. But even with those steps the results can still look a bit off kilter.

The reasons some type families do not include native small capitals in the italic styles has to do with style conventions or philosophies in page layout, particularly for long documents like novels. The thinking is small capitals should get an upright-only treatment.

As for the Alegreya type family, it has been pretty common for there to be differences between the font files available for a typeface at Google Fonts versus the same type family at Adobe Fonts. Sometimes that would be a good thing; I'd find weird bugs in the version I downloaded from Google Fonts versus the one available at Adobe Fonts. The situation can run vice versa too. I wish Google did more work testing their fonts in various graphics applications.