Keyboard shortcuts for small caps

You can set your own keyboard shortcuts in:

+System Preferences > Hardware > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts > Application Keyboard Shortcuts > All Applications > click the little plus sign under the window > Application: > Other > browse to Applications/iWork/Pages > Menu Title > None/All Caps/Small Caps/Title (type exactly including U&lc) > cmd shift k (or whatever you want)+

Peter

Currently I must use this menu path every time: Format > Font > Capitalization > Small Caps.

This command converts a unit of type designed for the weight and width of a baseline capital, scaling the unit of type down in size. Scaling the unit of size down in size is down without visual compensation for legibility, so the weight and width is now too light and less legible.

The command is there to do two things : support fake small capitals in fonts that don't have true small capitals, and support fake small capitals in fonts that do have true small capitals that cannot be used in PDF because the true small archives will be unsearchable.

Typographically speaking, this is a sad and sorry state of affairs.

/hh

PeterBreis0807 wrote:
I would add option to the keyboard command to make the negative.

What is the negative of "Small caps" ?

The menu item doesn't behave as a switch.

So, is it
none
AllCaps
Title ?

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 23 septembre 2009 11:22:31

Type production people do not agree about whether small capitals are glyph variants drawn off lower case or are glyph variants drawn off upper case.

When small capitals are faked, they are drawn by faking from capitals, so the opposite of small capitals in that case is capitals.

Small capitals are often done as glyph variants drawn off lower case in line layout, so in typography the opposite can be lower case.

There is a titling case in fine typography. This case is shorter than upper case and taller than lower case. Titling case is used where the difference between capitals and small capitals is too visually disturbing, e.g. so a titling capital is used first in the word instead of a true capital.

/hh

I perfectly know that calculated styles are odd ones.

I asked peter which is the opposite of the menu item small caps.

Your response is not accurate.
If the original text was typed in Uppercase, the opposite of Small Caps is certainly not Lowercase.

My guess is that dwb gave the correct response:
the opposite of any item of the Capitalization menu is none.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 23 septembre 2009 11:50:21

If the original text was typed in Uppercase, the opposite of Small Caps is certainly not Lowercase.

Correct, speed typing. Should be upper case and small upper case / capitals and small capitals.

None is no case, and no case is typographically meaningless. If a composed case conversion is decomposed, the source case should be specified.

There is no agreement among type production people on what the correct source case is for small upper case / small capitals, so there is no simple solution.

/hh

From my point of view, the opposite of a menu item is the one which reset the status which was available before the triggering of the menu item.

If a text was typed in uppercase and the user triggered the menu item *Small caps*, resetting the original status may done only by triggering the menu item none.
If we trigger an other menu item, we aren't doing the opposite, we are applying an other calculated style.

If a text was typed in Uppercase and the user triggered the menu item Lowercase then trigger the menu item *Small caps*, the opposite would be to trigger the menu item Lowercase.

So, from my point of vue, the true response is:

the opposite of the menu item *Small caps* is one of the three other menu items in the Capitalization menu.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 23 septembre 2009 12:27:58

I would say the base set is U&lc, since from that you can change to ALL CAPS or SMALL CAPS or Word Caps or Sentence caps.

In other words correctly typed U&lc contains all the information necessary to form up all the others and as such that is what should be typed before styled alteration.

Peter

In other words correctly typed U&lc contains all the information necessary to form up all the others and as such that is what should be typed before styled alteration.

Agreed, the principle of the thing is to preserve plain text plain and pass formatting to the font with properly designed features (not faked features).

/hh

We are not living on your clouds 😉

Most of the users apply the available calculated (fake) styles and complain that Apple doesn't offer calculated bold, italic …

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 24 septembre 2009 12:32:17

Follow the same procedure and set another key combination for None.

Walt

I would add option to the keyboard command to make the negative.

Whatever you do use a sensible memorable set of similar commands.

Peter