Re: OpenType and XeConTeXt

[Adam Lindsay <atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk>]

Steffen Wolfrum wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> using ConTeXt with XeTeX seems to be an nice option for us MacOSX users.
> But I get always confused with the names for these rich features like 
> Style Option, Ligatures, Variants.
> 
> I mean: how do I know how many variants and style options a font has and 
> how they and their ligatures etc. want to be called?
> In plain ConTeXt (for the 255 characters) we can use \showfont[...] and 
> \showcharacters in order to know how to call the specific 
> characters/glyphs. But what about OpenType?

\showfont is limited to unicode's 0-255 slots, but it's functional:
  \showfont["Book Antiqua"]

> Peeking at the LaTeX side of XeTeX, I saw that they have created a 
> packages called fontspec which seems to give better access to all (?) if 
> these options.
> 
> What about us? Is there help also for XeConTeXt?

I find that the lcdf typetools are a tremendous help:
 > otfinfo -f ~/Library/Fonts/WarnockPro-Regular.otf

aalt    Access All Alternates
c2sc    Small Capitals From Capitals
case    Case-Sensitive Forms
cpsp    Capital Spacing
cswh    Contextual Swash
dlig    Discretionary Ligatures
dnom    Denominators
fina    Terminal Forms
frac    Fractions
hist    Historical Forms
kern    Kerning
liga    Standard Ligatures
lnum    Lining Figures
numr    Numerators
onum    Oldstyle Figures
ordn    Ordinals
ornm    Ornaments
pnum    Proportional Figures
salt    Stylistic Alternates
sinf    Scientific Inferiors
size    Optical Size
smcp    Small Capitals
sups    Superscript
tnum    Tabular Figures
zero    Slashed Zero


and I can test the features with:
  \showfont["Warnock Pro: +smcp"]

Fontspec is an impressive piece of work, but I think it's driven much 
more by the 'possible' than by requirements. My time constraints (i.e., 
daughter) won't let me do that sort of exploratory coding anymore. I can 
try and help out with concrete requests, though.

[I feel like a lot of the stuff I've done in this space has been 
released into a vacuum, and that few people are actually making stuff 
with OpenType and/or XeConTeXt.]

adam
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  Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept.     atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk
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