ConTeXt and expert fonts (redux)

ConTeXt and expert fonts (redux)

[Adam Lindsay]

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

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 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
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Re: ConTeXt and expert fonts (redux)

[Bruce D'Arcus]

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

Re: ConTeXt and expert fonts (redux)

[Bruce D'Arcus]

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

Re: ConTeXt and expert fonts (redux)

[Adam Lindsay]

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
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Re: ConTeXt and expert fonts (redux)

[Bruce D'Arcus]

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

Re: ConTeXt and expert fonts (redux)

[Bill McClain]

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003 10:23:35 -0500
"Bruce D'Arcus" <bdarcus@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> 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
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