ConTeXt and expert fonts (redux)
Hi, all. I'm trying to come to terms with some expert fonts, and to map a strategy for dealing with them. Right now, I'm looking at the limits described by font-ini, and trying to see if I understand them correctly. Small caps are treated as a style of their own, which doesn't interact with \bf boldface the same way \it italic or \sl slanted do. With some of the pro fonts I'm starting to deal with (e.g., Cronos Pro or Minion Pro), there are small caps for each of \bf, \it, and \bi, as well as the normal \tf typeface. http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/pdfs/1733.pdf The existing model can be interpreted this way: | shape | weight|norm |slant|ital |caps | ------|-----|-----|-----|-----| norm| tf | sl | it | sc | bold| bf | bs | bi | | I'm not enthusiastic about the slanted shape in general, so I would draw another model, basically as a 2x2x2 cube, but rendered here in 2 slices: (lowercase) (smallcaps) | shape | | shape | weight|norm |ital | weight|norm |ital | ------|-----|-----| ------|-----|-----| norm| tf | it | norm| sc | ic | bold| bf | bi | bold| bc | bt | (who knows what the short name of the last cell should be?) I see this as being typographically more attractive than the dependence on \kap{} and similar commands (since the stroke weight stays much more consistent when you use the pre-defined, non-faked glyphs). So. How would I manage this? I guess I'm wondering if I'm going to get into trouble if I experiment with redefining \slfam, \ttfam, and \bsfam for my own nefarious purposes? Do other people see another way of handling things? Side issues, but related... In August 2002, Hans replied to Bruce D'Arcus:
Why not in ConTeXt then? If one has a complete expert set of a font like Minion, shouldn't what I outlined above be the default behavior of a TeX macro system? Once TeX supports OpenType this will become all the more relevant...
you can set up a lot, like fonts and conversions of numbers so it's possible,
Am I right in guessing that I would find this in supp-num.tex now? It's interesting, and it definitely seems to be similar in spirit to the font- based switches for tabular (monospaced) vs. proportional figures that are enabled by these pro fonts. I haven't studied this in detail (texexec -- module completely fails on this one), but can it include font switching? Would that be the appropriate approach? Any thoughts? adam -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Adam T. Lindsay atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk Computing Dept, Lancaster University +44(0)1524/594.537 Lancaster, LA1 4YR, UK Fax:+44(0)1524/593.608 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
On Thursday, April 3, 2003, at 09:08 AM, Adam Lindsay wrote:
So. How would I manage this?
Having discussed this with Bill McClain a bit, you start to understand how complicated it would be to fully support these OpenType fonts, with their huge range of shapes, optical sizes, weights, figure styles, etc. The conclusion I came to was: 1) Typescripts are your friends, and best to have separate ones for small-caps, old-style figures, etc. For Minion Pro: you'd have four, and you'd likely only use one in a document anyway. 2) Use an auto-sizing mechanism to switch the optical sizes (so that you don't end up with 16 typescripts). 3) For things like superior figures for footnotes, tabular figures for tables, etc., I've just started to define special fonts on their own, named like \FootnoteFont or \TableFont. The latter works because you can specify the font in a table, but the former doesn't because there is no equivalent command for footnote markers. In that case, hope you have the skill (which I don't) to figure out some new code Hans came up with for Idris to allow: \setupfootnoteamark[style=\FootnoteFont] Bruce
I wrote:
1) Typescripts are your friends, and best to have separate ones for small-caps, old-style figures, etc. For Minion Pro: you'd have four, and you'd likely only use one in a document anyway.
The limitations of this approach, of course, are that you can't easily get something like a bold small-cap section heading or caption or whatever. You'd have to use the SC typescript there... Bruce
Bruce D'Arcus said this at Thu, 3 Apr 2003 09:45:21 -0500:
I wrote:
1) Typescripts are your friends, and best to have separate ones for small-caps, old-style figures, etc. For Minion Pro: you'd have four, and you'd likely only use one in a document anyway.
The limitations of this approach, of course, are that you can't easily get something like a bold small-cap section heading or caption or whatever. You'd have to use the SC typescript there...
And I suspect that's something to be avoided if possible, considering the price of changing fonts and typescripts. A lot of what I typeset is an alphabet soup of acronyms, so I'm much more drawn to an approach with small caps as a context-sensitive font alternative (perpendicular to \bf and \it). I will take your comments on the complexities of OpenType to heart (you've been looking at the problem longer than I have), but I do want to spend some time thinking about a rational approach. Cheers, adam -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Adam T. Lindsay atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk Computing Dept, Lancaster University +44(0)1524/594.537 Lancaster, LA1 4YR, UK Fax:+44(0)1524/593.608 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
On Thursday, April 3, 2003, at 09:48 AM, Adam Lindsay wrote:
And I suspect that's something to be avoided if possible, considering the price of changing fonts and typescripts. A lot of what I typeset is an alphabet soup of acronyms, so I'm much more drawn to an approach with small caps as a context-sensitive font alternative (perpendicular to \bf and \it).
Well, it's no problem to define \sc in each typescript, so that you get the normal weight small cap glyphs for acronyms without any need to change typescript. It's just when you start to combine different axes (weight, shape, optical size, etc.) that things get tricky and the ConTeXt font mechanism (which doesn't even support semi-bold) cannot cope.
I will take your comments on the complexities of OpenType to heart (you've been looking at the problem longer than I have), but I do want to spend some time thinking about a rational approach.
Absolutely. It's why I posted the original note back in August! I'll be interested in what you come up with. There was discussion on the TeX fonts mailing list awhile ago about coming up with a new font naming scheme (in turn tied to a new installer) that could relate to these questions. It'd be nice to see that progress to support these sorts of fonts, and to then in turn feed back into the ConTeXt mechanism. Bruce
On Thu, 3 Apr 2003 10:23:35 -0500
"Bruce D'Arcus"
I'll be interested in what you come up with.
As will I! Although I document my own efforts at fonts in Context on my web page, I really understand very little about the internals, or what is easy or hard to configure. Font sizes in typescripts are particularly mysterious. Last year Peter Sojan pointed out to me that the [size] parameter in my examples doesn't work as I've described. He's right, but I've never been able to figure it out. -Bill -- Sattre Press Tales of War http://sattre-press.com/ by Lord Dunsany info@sattre-press.com http://tow.sattre-press.com/
participants (3)
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Adam Lindsay -
Bill McClain -
Bruce D'Arcus