How to use "expert characters" in OpenType fonts?

[_alansky_]

I know how to insert specific characters in a document with OS X's Character Palette. But how would one set a whole paragraph in small caps, for instance? Adobe CS3 apps include the necessary typographic controls to do this, but many applications (including Apple's native Cocoa apps) do not. It appears at first glance that users of many word processing apps are losing easy access to expert charsets (in those fonts that include them) if they "upgrade" to OpenType fonts. Am I missing something?

Thanks!

Alan

[Thomas Phinney]

Apple's Keynote and Pages support this sort of thing. However, there are indeed plenty of applications that do not, including Microsoft Word.

If you want to try to do fine typography in applications such as Microsoft Word, you may indeed be better off sticking with "old" fonts, until OpenType typography is supported in those applications.

Regards,

T

[Neil_Keller]

>If you want to try to do fine typography in applications such as Microsoft Word...<br /><br />It wouldn't be my first choice. (Sorry, Thomas, I couldn't resist!) <lol><br /><br />Neil

[_alansky_]

I agree that anyone who cares about good typography probably wouldn't use Microsoft Word by choice, but there are plenty of designers who use Word to accommodate their hapless clients. It sure seems odd to me that OpenType isn't fully supported even on the Mac more than five years after it supposedly supplanted Postscript Type 1 as the official standard.

This is kind of off topic, but is there any chance that all those multiple master fonts that Adobe made back in the 90's will ever be supported again? I'm still running ATM in Classic mode on one partition of a powerbook G4 solely for the purpose of creating new multiple master font instances which, once created, can be copied into an OS X Fonts folder and used like any other font.

[Dov Isaacs]

Assume that Multiple Master fonts are a dead issue, for better or worse. They were part of Type 1 technology. Such support is not defined in today's OpenType CFF font format.

- Dov

[Neil_Keller]

alansky,<br /><br />Some thoughts from my side of the monitor. I also have the Office Suite on my system, primarily to support clients. But as I understand, the primary user base is general office, academia, legal, etc., not designers or typographers. I would believe that most of the former use system-installed or bundled TrueType fonts; maybe some Type 1; possibly a few use OpenType. I would further guess that relatively few such users go out of the way to purchase OpenType fonts -- or any fonts at all. Hey, with maybe 150 "free" fonts bundled with the OS, why in the world would they ever need another font? <g><br /><br />Not sure why you say that OpenType isn't fully supported on the Mac -- the OS can handle them. But I still wouldn't go so far as to call it the "official" standard. Specific apps are holding OpenType back by not rewriting their code.<br /><br />Alas, you can forget about further development of multiple master fonts. As wonderful as that technology was, it never really took off. Kind of like Beta VCRs.<br /><br />Neil