[Scribus] Ligatures and "Expert Fonts" again

[unknown]

Hello all,

I searched the archives and did not find much, so if I am
reposting or missed something please inform me.

My question:

Is there any way (in 1.3.x) to deal with ligatures and other
features of "Expert Fonts" like oldstyle numerals in a more
convenient way than putting in special characters by hand?

I have OpenType fonts (with all subsets included) and the
scattered Postscript versions of my font.

Thanks for any answers or useful links.
Robert

[unknown]

Post by unknown
Hello all,
I searched the archives and did not find much, so if I am
reposting or missed something please inform me.
Is there any way (in 1.3.x) to deal with ligatures and other
features of "Expert Fonts" like oldstyle numerals in a more
convenient way than putting in special characters by hand?
I have OpenType fonts (with all subsets included) and the
scattered Postscript versions of my font.
Thanks for any answers or useful links.
Robert
_______________________________________________
Scribus mailing list
Scribus at nashi.altmuehlnet.de
http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus

Hi,
currently, there is no way to automatically deal with ligatures, but
it's on the roadmap:

http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=1413

br
Maciej

[unknown]

Post by unknown
Hi,
currently, there is no way to automatically deal with ligatures, but
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=1413
br
Maciej

Is there any way to find out if there's hope for these
features to be included in the near future?
I find them quite essential for high quality DTP.

It seems that I will have to continue using LaTeX for
things it wasn't intended for...

Robert

[unknown]

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
Hi,
currently, there is no way to automatically deal with ligatures,
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=1413
br
Maciej

Is there any way to find out if there's hope for these
features to be included in the near future?
I find them quite essential for high quality DTP.
It seems that I will have to continue using LaTeX for
things it wasn't intended for...
Robert
_______________________________________________

As Maciej noted, it is on the list.

The rendering engine will be re-written and part of this is to enable
support Open Type features far beyond current capabilites.

It is a very important part of the roadmap for 1.3.x.

Cheers,
Peter

[unknown]

Post by unknown
Is there any way to find out if there's hope for these
features to be included in the near future?

Depends on your concept of "near future":
* next four weeks: unlikely
* next four months: very likely

I think it will definitely be included in the next major stable release
(1.4)
which will take some more time, since we are only at the beginning of
the 1.3 series.

Post by unknown
I find them quite essential for high quality DTP.
It seems that I will have to continue using LaTeX for
things it wasn't intended for...

AFAIK you have to do some tweaking with LaTeX to access those font
features...

I'm not very firm with Scribus scripting, but I think it would be
possible for you to develop a Python script "replace with oldstyle
numerals in selection" which automates the "insert special" procedure.
This is not the way we want to implement it though (we plan some sort
of charstyle for those features).

/Andreas

[unknown]

Hi,

As a footnote, I'd like to add that Quark has never had an elegant way
to achieve this either.
The only efficient way that I know to work with Expert fonts was to use
an XTension (that is not supported anymore) running with version 4.x and
below. (Something like a super search & replace dialog.)

Louis

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
Is there any way to find out if there's hope for these
features to be included in the near future?

* next four weeks: unlikely
* next four months: very likely
I think it will definitely be included in the next major stable release
(1.4)
which will take some more time, since we are only at the beginning of
the 1.3 series.

Post by unknown
I find them quite essential for high quality DTP.
It seems that I will have to continue using LaTeX for
things it wasn't intended for...

AFAIK you have to do some tweaking with LaTeX to access those font
features...
I'm not very firm with Scribus scripting, but I think it would be
possible for you to develop a Python script "replace with oldstyle
numerals in selection" which automates the "insert special" procedure.
This is not the way we want to implement it though (we plan some sort of
charstyle for those features).
/Andreas
_______________________________________________
Scribus mailing list
Scribus at nashi.altmuehlnet.de
http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus

[unknown]

There's a long way to go to catch up with what Adobe's InDesign, for the
last three versions (6, CS, and CS 2) can do. They cover OpenType,
strokes, type manipulation, plus shadowing to my needs for the last four
or so years.

Frank

Post by unknown
Hi,
As a footnote, I'd like to add that Quark has never had an elegant way
to achieve this either.
The only efficient way that I know to work with Expert fonts was to
use an XTension (that is not supported anymore) running with version
4.x and below. (Something like a super search & replace dialog.)
Louis

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
Is there any way to find out if there's hope for these
features to be included in the near future?

* next four weeks: unlikely
* next four months: very likely

Four months, huh? I sure hope you are on the mark, Louis

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
I think it will definitely be included in the next major stable
release (1.4)
which will take some more time, since we are only at the beginning of
the 1.3 series.

Post by unknown
I find them quite essential for high quality DTP.
It seems that I will have to continue using LaTeX for
things it wasn't intended for...

AFAIK you have to do some tweaking with LaTeX to access those font
features...
I'm not very firm with Scribus scripting, but I think it would be
possible for you to develop a Python script "replace with oldstyle
numerals in selection" which automates the "insert special"
procedure. This is not the way we want to implement it though (we
plan some sort of charstyle for those features).
/Andreas

[unknown]

Post by unknown
AFAIK you have to do some tweaking with LaTeX to access those font
features...

No, I think it's automatic in LaTeX. It takes tweaking when you don't
want the ligatures to appear.

Greg

[unknown]

Post by unknown
As a footnote, I'd like to add that Quark has never had an elegant way
to achieve this either. The only efficient way that I know to work
with Expert fonts was to use an XTension (that is not supported
anymore) running with version 4.x and below. (Something like a super
search & replace dialog.)

The absolute best way to do this, given the state of today's
computers and software, is the way Adobe implemented it in
InDesign.

Early in the development of InDesign Adobe realized that ligatures
totally screw up spell checkers and thesauruses. We DTPers
already knew that, of course. It was trivial to write a macro in a
word processor to replace the characters with their corresponding
ligatures, even if the ligatures were in a separate font. But you'd
better be sure you waited to run the macro after finishing all the
writing and spell checking.

Another problem was transfering text to another application.
Suppose I had some text that I had applied ligatures to with my
macro, and then I want to copy and paste some of it into an e-mail,
or a website, or anyplace where all the fonts might not be available.

Adobe solved both these problems by holding the text internally
without ligatures. Thus, the spell checker was not confused and
other applications received text they could handle. For screen
display and printing the alternate ligatures are used. Of course, this
works only with OpenType fonts that are properly coded and which
contain the ligature alternates. It does not work with the older fonts
where the ligatures are in a separate "expert set."

The system works extremely well. In the currrent version of
InDesign there are several ligature options. You can turn on the f-
ligatures, you can turn on "discretionary" ligatures (ct, st, etc.),
and/or you can turn on swash alternates.

I hope Scribus implements a similar scheme. I can't think of any
other way to do it.

And after the ligature issue is handled, could we have optical
kerning? :)

[unknown]

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
As a footnote, I'd like to add that Quark has never had an elegant way
to achieve this either. The only efficient way that I know to work
with Expert fonts was to use an XTension (that is not supported
anymore) running with version 4.x and below. (Something like a super
search & replace dialog.)

The absolute best way to do this, given the state of today's
computers and software, is the way Adobe implemented it in
InDesign.

I fully concur, John. The situation has been thought-out as the "best
way" by Adobe. I can see no better way myself, and I've been in the type
and graphic design business since the '70s. Went digital in 1984. <smile>

Frank

[unknown]

Post by unknown
* next four weeks: unlikely
* next four months: very likely

Sounds promising...

Post by unknown
AFAIK you have to do some tweaking with LaTeX to access those font
features...

No, you get f-Ligatures and em/en-dashes automatically. Moreover, there
are some packages around that handle the other things, esp. for the
Adobe Fonts. There are also some packages for nifty stuff like replacing
e.g. an ff-Ligature with f-ff or ck with k-k (needed for german hyphenation).
LaTeX is fifteen years ahead... ;)

Post by unknown
I'm not very firm with Scribus scripting, but I think it would be
possible for you to develop a Python script "replace with oldstyle
numerals in selection" which automates the "insert special" procedure.

My programming skills are weak, esp. Python, and I don't think this
would be trivial since the specials are at different places in
different fonts.

But of course, such a script would be a good thing to have for the
time being...
... any pro script-hacker interested?


Robert

[unknown]

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
AFAIK you have to do some tweaking with LaTeX to access those font
features...

No, I think it's automatic in LaTeX. It takes tweaking when you don't
want the ligatures to appear.

That's only the f-ligatures (also -- and ---, if you want to count
those as ligatures).
For oldstyle numerals or swash glyphs you'd have to do a lot of extra
work, unless someone else already did and provided a package.

/Andreas

[unknown]

Post by unknown
The absolute best way to do this, given the state of today's
computers and software, is the way Adobe implemented it in
InDesign.
...
Adobe solved both these problems by holding the text internally
without ligatures. Thus, the spell checker was not confused and
other applications received text they could handle. For screen
display and printing the alternate ligatures are used.

I don't know InDesign but I guess that's similar to what we plan to
implement.

Post by unknown
Of course, this
works only with OpenType fonts that are properly coded and which
contain the ligature alternates. It does not work with the older fonts
where the ligatures are in a separate "expert set."

We'll see about that :-)

Post by unknown
The system works extremely well. In the currrent version of
InDesign there are several ligature options. You can turn on the f-
ligatures, you can turn on "discretionary" ligatures (ct, st, etc.),
and/or you can turn on swash alternates.

Charwise, paragraphwise or documentwise?

Post by unknown
I hope Scribus implements a similar scheme. I can't think of any
other way to do it.
And after the ligature issue is handled, could we have optical
kerning? :)

Scribus currently relies on the kerning information in the font. We
will add a manual kerning option soon.
Adobe's optical kerning is patented AFAIK (don't we hate those patent
issues?).
I don't know about iKern (http://www.iginomarini.com/ikern.html).

/Andreas

[unknown]

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
The absolute best way to do this, given the state of today's
computers and software, is the way Adobe implemented it in
InDesign.
...
Adobe solved both these problems by holding the text internally
without ligatures. Thus, the spell checker was not confused and
other applications received text they could handle. For screen
display and printing the alternate ligatures are used.

I don't know InDesign but I guess that's similar to what we plan to
implement.

Post by unknown
Of course, this
works only with OpenType fonts that are properly coded and which
contain the ligature alternates. It does not work with the older fonts
where the ligatures are in a separate "expert set."

We'll see about that :-)

Post by unknown
The system works extremely well. In the currrent version of
InDesign there are several ligature options. You can turn on the f-
ligatures, you can turn on "discretionary" ligatures (ct, st, etc.),
and/or you can turn on swash alternates.

Charwise, paragraphwise or

For Scribus, maybe Stylewise?

If that control is part of char styles, then you can have it work on an
ad-hoc basis via anonymous char styles, on a par basis (by applying a
char style for the par) and to an extent on a document basis using a
default "base" char style if some sort of inheritance is supported.

For all I know this is the plan aready, but it's worth mentioning
anyway.

--
Craig Ringer

[unknown]

Hi Robert,

Post by unknown
LaTeX is fifteen years ahead... ;)

Yes, it is, and it was since its (or more precisely: TeX's) inception.
The simple reason is that the ingenious Prof. Knuth left the Ivory tower
of the University and learned the "black art" of typesetters. TeX is the
digital incarnation of more than 500 years of experience in typesetting.
Since you are a German, you would be surprised how many of our spelling
rules (at least before some bureaucrats decided to commit an act of
vandalism to them in 1996) are not guided by linguistic principles but
by aesthetical ones, found by typesetters over the centuries. The old
rule not to hyphenate "st", for instance, was established by
typesetters, because they found out that it made reading easier (and
spelling, as much as typography, is above all about ease of reading!).

Given that background, it seems almost natural to me that many or most
of InDesign's typographic features are to a large extent based on
TeX/LaTeX algorithms. This is, IMHO, the place to dig for the real
treasures of digital typography.

Cheers,

Christoph

[unknown]

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
The system works extremely well. In the currrent version of
InDesign there are several ligature options. You can turn on the f-
ligatures, you can turn on "discretionary" ligatures (ct, st, etc.),
and/or you can turn on swash alternates.

Charwise, paragraphwise or documentwise?

InDesign has character styles and paragraph styles, but no
document-wide style. You can, however, set options for new
documents which could include specific ligature choices.

Character and paragraph styles in InDesign are incredibly thorough.
There is just about nothing that you can't set in a style. You can
even have a style embedded within another style. For example, I
could create a paragraph style in roman, and embed an italic
character style to apply after, say, a colon, to return to the regular
roman after, say, the period next following the colon. Any character
can be the trigger, including any of the various white spaces.

InDesign is a joy to use. I just wish it ran on Linux. But then,
Scribus will eventually make it unnecessary for me to use it or
Windows at all.

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
And after the ligature issue is handled, could we have optical
kerning? :)

Scribus currently relies on the kerning information in the font. We
will add a manual kerning option soon. Adobe's optical kerning is
patented AFAIK (don't we hate those patent issues?). I don't know
about iKern (http://www.iginomarini.com/ikern.html).

I'm not an expert on software patents, but I can't figure out how
they could patent the concept. It's like Henry Ford being granted a
patent for the idea of an "automobile," or WordPerfect Corporation
being granted a patent for the concept of a word processor.

The way I understand optical kerning in InDesign is that it
measures the area between the characters' outlines, using the
baseline and x-height for the other dimensions (or perhaps other
criteria as well for characters with ascenders and descenders), and
then adjusts the kerning by thousandths of an em to make each
character have the same area between it and the next character. I
don't see how you could get a patent on the idea of measuring area.

Perhaps their patent is just on the code they wrote to accomplish
this feat. If so, someone else could write different code that did the
same thing.

[unknown]

Hi,

There is a very nice Mac OS 10.3/4 port of LaTeX/TeX which does OpenType
fonts very well known as the XeTeX. I have tested it for Indic and
Chinese langauges, it does work very well. The nice thing about it is
that it takes the fonts installed in the system. I have not tested it
for OpenType ligature features, but I suppose it works very well. It
basically uses the Mac font engine and may be available soon on
Pentium...

Both OpenOffice and Scribus still lacks proper Indic/Chinese langauge
support. The story editor in Scribus does it correctly but output
doesn't do the glyph substitutions required in Indic langauges (1.3.1cvs
22 August 2005 build). Color Management and PDF features in Scribus is
better I suppose than XeTeX.


Suki

[unknown]

Post by unknown
Hi,
There is a very nice Mac OS 10.3/4 port of LaTeX/TeX which does OpenType
fonts very well known as the XeTeX. I have tested it for Indic and
Chinese langauges, it does work very well. The nice thing about it is
that it takes the fonts installed in the system. I have not tested it
for OpenType ligature features, but I suppose it works very well. It
basically uses the Mac font engine and may be available soon on
Pentium...
Both OpenOffice and Scribus still lacks proper Indic/Chinese langauge
support. The story editor in Scribus does it correctly but output
doesn't do the glyph substitutions required in Indic langauges (1.3.1cvs
22 August 2005 build). Color Management and PDF features in Scribus is
better I suppose than XeTeX.

Look to our non latin announcement from ages ago on www.scribus.net.

Craig
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[unknown]

Post by unknown

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
And after the ligature issue is handled, could we have optical
kerning? :)

Scribus currently relies on the kerning information in the font. We
will add a manual kerning option soon. Adobe's optical kerning is
patented AFAIK (don't we hate those patent issues?). I don't know
about iKern (http://www.iginomarini.com/ikern.html).

I'm not an expert on software patents, but I can't figure out how
they could patent the concept. It's like Henry Ford being granted a
patent for the idea of an "automobile," or WordPerfect Corporation
being granted a patent for the concept of a word processor.

I got my impression from tphinney's comment from Thu, 2005-04-14 17:42
in this thread: http://www.typophile.com/node/10317
The way I read it Adobe used some German patent to implement optical
kerning.

There's some other comments on how optical kerning works in InDesign
(resp. does not work) you may want to read also.

Post by unknown
The way I understand optical kerning in InDesign is that it
measures the area between the characters' outlines, using the
baseline and x-height for the other dimensions (or perhaps other
criteria as well for characters with ascenders and descenders), and
then adjusts the kerning by thousandths of an em to make each
character have the same area between it and the next character. I
don't see how you could get a patent on the idea of measuring area.

Hm, I think there's more than one way to measure all that. iKern also
takes into account some regularety about distances between stems etc.
It's not only mathematics, you have to work against the optical tricks
the human eye plays on us.

Post by unknown
Perhaps their patent is just on the code they wrote to accomplish
this feat. If so, someone else could write different code that did the
same thing.

I doubt that, see above.

/Andreas

[unknown]

...

Post by unknown

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
The system works extremely well. In the currrent version of
InDesign there are several ligature options. You can turn on the f-
ligatures, you can turn on "discretionary" ligatures (ct, st,

etc.),

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
and/or you can turn on swash alternates.

Charwise, paragraphwise or

For Scribus, maybe Stylewise?

Yes, of course :-)
We plan to have charstyles and paragraphstyles (which can also contain
a charstyle)
and default paragraphstyles for frames / documents.

Post by unknown
If that control is part of char styles, then you can have it work on an
ad-hoc basis via anonymous char styles, on a par basis (by applying a
char style for the par) and to an extent on a document basis using a
default "base" char style if some sort of inheritance is supported.
For all I know this is the plan aready, but it's worth mentioning
anyway.

Yep.

/Andreas

[unknown]

Post by unknown
...

Post by unknown

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
The system works extremely well. In the currrent version of
InDesign there are several ligature options. You can turn on the f-
ligatures, you can turn on "discretionary" ligatures (ct, st,

etc.),

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
and/or you can turn on swash alternates.

Charwise, paragraphwise or

For Scribus, maybe Stylewise?

Yes, of course :-)
We plan to have charstyles and paragraphstyles (which can also contain
a charstyle)
and default paragraphstyles for frames / documents.

In the current version of the new file format "paragraph styles" _are_
the "text styles a.k.a charstyles" with paragraph-specific extensions. There
is currently no pre-set limit on the text style inheritance. So, it should be
possible to produce whatever text style hierarchy is needed for the task.

Below is an excerpt from the DTD if anyone would like to see the actual
definitions and comment on them.

<!ENTITY % char-style-attr 'id ID #REQUIRED
parentstyleid IDREF #IMPLIED
font-face CDATA "Bitstream Vera Regular"
font-family-hint CDATA "Vera"
font-weight-hint CDATA "Regular"
font-slant-hint CDATA "Normal"
font-size CDATA "12"
font-size-units (pt|pc) "pt"
font-width CDATA "1"
char-tracking CDATA "0"
word-tracking CDATA "0"
font-kerning CDATA "0"
font-leading-type (relative|auto|fixed|grid) "relative"
font-leading-type-amount CDATA "1"
font-leading-mode (proportional|baseline|top-of-caps|custom) "proportional"
font-leading-mode-amount CDATA "1"
font-rank (subscript|superscript) #IMPLIED
font-capitalization (uppercase|lowercase|title-case|small-caps) #IMPLIED
font-underline (yes|no) "no"
font-strikethrough (yes|no) "no"
font-outline (yes|no) "no"
text-stroke-color CDATA #IMPLIED
text-stroke-shadow CDATA #IMPLIED
text-stroke-opacity CDATA #IMPLIED
text-fill-color CDATA #IMPLIED
text-fill-shadow CDATA #IMPLIED
text-fill-opacity CDATA #IMPLIED
justification (left|right|center|justify|force-justify) "left"
language CDATA "en"
text-direction CDATA "ltr"
solid-block (yes|no) "no"'>

<!ELEMENT txt-style EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST txt-style %char-style-attr;>

<!ELEMENT par-style EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST par-style %char-style-attr;
par-indent-first CDATA #IMPLIED
par-indent-left CDATA #IMPLIED
par-indent-right CDATA #IMPLIED
par-indent-unit %unit;
par-indent-hanging (yes|no) "no"
par-spacing-before CDATA #IMPLIED
par-spacing-after CDATA #IMPLIED
par-spacing-unit %unit;
par-type (normal|bullet|drop-cap|incr-number) "normal"
bullet-char ENTITY #IMPLIED>

Post by unknown

Post by unknown
If that control is part of char styles, then you can have it work on an
ad-hoc basis via anonymous char styles, on a par basis (by applying a
char style for the par) and to an extent on a document basis using a
default "base" char style if some sort of inheritance is supported.
For all I know this is the plan aready, but it's worth mentioning
anyway.

Yep.
/Andreas
_______________________________________________
Scribus mailing list
Scribus at nashi.altmuehlnet.de
http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus