Re: fonts and typescripts

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Charles P. Schaum wrote:

> Here's an interesting point: InDesign creates ligatures, but
> irrespective of what is going on in the actual font. So, unless you use
> Unicode Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, or whatever, the older style
> fonts that still inhabit the commercial multilingual industry get
> mangled. TeX and friends are smart and don't do that. They can handle
> some complicated typography more robustly than many others.

i'm currently reading a books with is typeset quite ok (in optima) but 
occasionally uses smallcaps with intercharacter spacing which looks ok 
apart form the occasional ligature and indeed fi a b c d liiks kin dof 
strange; it always puzzles me why professional dtp programs don't deal 
with it

anyhow, in context mkiv (luatex version) we will have way more control 
than we have now

> InDesign and InCopy use a version control system where one can "check
> out," "check in," and track changes in a parallel workflow. Grep

how do they deal with non compatible new features; for instance, at 
bachotek i learned that some otf features that are not supported in 
older versions are supported in new ones (or are supported differently); 
is there some compatibility mode (i.e. is the old behavior still present 
and the ID/IC version number stored in the document?)

> searching has also been integrated. It seems to me that if something
> like Scribus had a means to interlink with ConTeXt, cvs / svn or the
> like, and had a means of automatically generating code and previews, you
> would have a typesetting system that could compete feature for feature
> with InDesign and InCopy, and surpass it in some cases.

well, that's the idea -)

Hans

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