OpenType/Contextual Alternates not working?

[Klаus]

Hi all!

Using the typeface »Erikas Farbband«, a typewriter style monospaced font, one can emulate some sort of »natural deviation« in glyph shapes, since every single character seems to have several alternative versions included in the font data.

This works fine with Illustrator and even Photoshop – but I can’t get it to work with InDesign, even though Contextual Alternates are activated. 😞

See the attached screenshot, showing four beautifully deviating e’s with Illustrator and Photoshop, but not with InDesign.

Any idea what to do about this?

[Peter Spier]

Have you opened the OpenType fly-out menu from the Character Panel menu? I suspect that the equivalent to the Stylistic Alternates button in Illustrator and Photoshop would be Stylistic Sets.

[Klаus]

Well, I tried just about everything reasonable from the OpenType fly-out – to no avail.

[Peter Spier]

I'm afraid I have no more ideas. Perhaps someone else has a clue.

[Sami Artur]

Hi Klaus, the Indesign middle east version has contextual alternates option.

You need to deinstall the regular version and install a ME version like English- hebrew or English-arabic.

The Indesign ME is like the regular with a little more features.

Regards

Sami

[Klаus]

Thank you. This issue is not that important to me, it just made me wonder a bit.

[Sami Artur]

Hi Klaus,
You can use a script to access this opentype feature.
Here is the script:

main ();

function main ()
{
try
{
if (app.selection[0].otfStylisticAlternate == true)
app.selection[0].otfStylisticAlternate = false;
else
app.selection[0].otfStylisticAlternate = true
}
catch (_){}
}

Regards
Sami

[Klаus]

Thank you, got it to work that way.