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Thoughtweft Publishing
Participant
August 27, 2017
Answered

Advanced typography help

  • August 27, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 1978 views

I recently purchased a font from MyFont that wasn't available on Adobes Typekit, and installed it with Skyfonts, but when I try to use the font in Adobe InDesign none of the advanced typography features are available. Could someone please help me with this?

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Correct answer Jeff Witchel, ACI

Select a character and hover over the top of that character with your Type tool. If there are alternates, they will pop up to the lower right of the character and you can click on the alternate to apply it.

3 replies

sidianmsjones
sidianmsjones
Known Participant
July 8, 2023

Jesus Adobe, you really drop the ball on pro features so often. I'm not even surprised anymore, just disappointed. No support for Stylistic Alternates in Indesign but you do support it in Photoshop?? Completely nonsensicle. 

Derek Cross
Community Expert
Derek CrossCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 9, 2023

Welcome to the InDesign forum – please note you are not addressing Adobe on here, it's a peer-to-peer support forum.

    Jeff Witchel, ACI
    Community Expert
    Jeff Witchel, ACICommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 27, 2017

    As Dov suggested, not all OpenType typefaces have ALL of the OpenType features available.

    To see what is available using a particular typeface:

    1. set some type in the typeface you'd like to use and select that text.
    2. look under the Options menu of the Character panel and look under the OpenType listing submenu
    3. only the OpenType features that are NOT in brackets [  ] are available in that typeface

    Hope this helps!

    Jongware
    Community Expert
    JongwareCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 28, 2017

    https://forums.adobe.com/people/Jeff+Witchel%2C+ACI  wrote

    ... only the OpenType features that are NOT in brackets [  ] are available in that typeface

    The feature OP is looking for, "Stylistic Alternates", is NOT in that list. Look:

    It is available as a full, standard option in Illustrator – it even has a dedicated icon:

    Of course OP can always manually select ("hunt-and-pick" or via the "Show:" selection dropdown in the Glyph list), but this must be done on a per-character basis. That's not how all of the properly supported OpenType features work.

    This means that the feature cannot be enabled/disabled on a global basis, and neither can it be switched on and off with a style.

    Adobe's OpenType User Guide (https://image.linotype.com/files/pdf/02_help/images/help_03/OTGuide.pdf ) lists stylistic alternates under the heading "Advanced Typography with OpenType Pro fonts":

    > ... Many non-standard glyphs, such as oldstyle figures, true small capitals, fractions, swashes, superiors, inferiors, ornaments, titling letters, contextual and stylistic alternates, beginning and ending letterforms and a full range of ligatures may also be included in a single font ...

    Even more, the same guide recommends to not use InDesign's Glyphs panel to willy-nilly pick and choose an alternate, but use the proper tools:

    > Note: Adobe advises selecting alternate glyphs by applying formatting or by “fi ltering” the glyph palette, when possible, rather than using an alternate glyph from the flyout. These methods yield more consistent results when changing fonts.

    (and they are right to warn thus).

    Scroll to the bottom of  ilovetypography's Introduction to Opentype Features ( Features ) for a rather sobering overview:

    "Stylistic Alternates" is supported by Photoshop and Illustrator at least since CS, but not by InDesign 1, 2, CS, CS2/3/4/5, nor by the not-listed newer versions of CC.

      MW Design
      MW Design
      Inspiring
      August 28, 2017

      And there are other valuable OT Features not supported in ID...*

      Although by default it is an all or nothing affair, the Stylistic Set 1 has all the same alternates as does the salt feature (plus 3 more, actually). As a work-around in this particular font, one could highlight the desired character and use ss01 for the substitution.

      * I have had to replicate various OT Features into stylistic sets in my own fonts in order to use them in ID (e.g., the hist feature). It's a pita.

      As AD has excellent OT Feature support, when APub is released, it too will have such excellent OT Feature support even though it will be a version 1 product. (But it will, of course, be lacking in many other more important ways as regards a layout application.)

        Dov Isaacs
        Dov Isaacs
        Legend
        August 27, 2017

        You didn't indicate what particular font you licensed. Not all fonts have advanced OpenType features that can be taken advantage of by InDesign, Illustrator, etc. Let us know exact what font you have!

                  - Dov

        - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
        T
        Thoughtweft PublishingAuthor
        Participant
        August 28, 2017

        The exact font I purchased was Lush Script. Here is the link to the MyFonts site with it. Lush Script™ - Webfont & Desktop font « MyFonts

        When I was testing it, I clicked the FF button on the right to see what other typography it had, and I really liked the Sylistic Alternates. When I was purchasing it, there was no selection for which variant of the font I wanted, so I presumed all of the advanced typography's were included.

        MW Design
        MW Design
        Inspiring
        August 28, 2017

        Lush | Typekit

        First hit doing a Google search. Tis the same font, yes?

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