OpenType Glyphs

You haven't actually said what you did or did not do.

To insert the glyph in the document, you have to double click on the glyph.

Peter

Hi, I have a problem with my Glyphs in Pages. They show in Special Characters, but they don't actually end up on a page. What's up with that?? What can I do?

For anyone to help you need to tell us exactly what glyphs in what font is not working for you. OS X support for OpenType features is limited. TextEdit has more than Pages.

It would be useful to respond to Tom's quetion because knowing which glyphs are annoying, maybe some one will be able to give a soluce.

Yesterdays I worked on a document embedding a wingdings glyph.
I had some difficulties to insert it (under 10.6.2) in a new doc but at last I got it.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 1 janvier 2010 21:25:40

I honestly don't think you have discovered any such thing.

Nor how to communicate your problem.

Try to pretend we are not standing behind you when you are trying whatever it is you are trying.

Because if you cast a quick look around you, that might turn out to be the case.

Peter

I just found out that Glyphs are limited on Pages, so that's why.

It could be that one of us knows how to do what you want regardless of what you think you have found out, but your failure to provide any specific information makes that impossible to determine.

Okay, I know what he's trying to say and where the problem is...

Try opening Pages, then going to the character palette and choosing Glyphs and then choosing a font with lots of glyph variants like Adobe Garamond Pro. I find (in particular with Garamond Pro) that from about row 800 column 5, certain glyphs don't work. A little warning message comes up at the bottom saying that this is a glyph variant, but it doesn't say how to get around this.

I just want a way to get certain ligatures that happen to be glyph variants. Any ideas?

A little warning message comes up at the bottom saying that this is a glyph variant, but it doesn't say how to get around this.

That's because there may not be any way to do it. OS X support for OpenType features used by Adobe fonts is limited, and varies among apps. TextEdit or Mellel may have more support than Pages.

With your font selected in the Font Panel, click on the gear wheel at the bottom left, then on the Typography tab. You will see various features like ligatures that you can activate. Check the boxes and try typing the components of the ligature you want and see if it works.

A little warning message comes up at the bottom saying that this is a glyph variant, but it doesn't say how to get around this. I just want a way to get certain ligatures that happen to be glyph variants. Any ideas?

TrueType simple does not support substitution (for reshaping, reordering). In other words, no glyph variants, only simple one character to one glyph shaping in the CMAP Character Map. Apple's extensions to TrueType (marketed as GX, TrueType 2, Apple Advanced Typography) and Microsoft's extensions to TrueType (marketed as TrueType Open, OpenType) support glyph variants (for reshaping, reordering).

Apple introduced a hack for direct drawing of glyph variants in the Apple Glyph Access Protocol for SFNT-housed font data (TrueType simple, AAT, OT). The hack lets you open the Glyph Catalogue in the Character Palette, insert your cursor in your copy, and click a GID Glyph Identifier or click Insert with Font for a glyph variant that is not drawn by a character code in the CMAP; glyphs drawn from characters in the CMAP have UTF16 and UTF8 short character identifiers as well as a GID.

One would like to think that Apple's text group correctly inserted both the character information and the imageable composition, but Apple's text group inserts REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (UTF16 FFFD, UTF8 EF BF BD) instead of decomposing the Glyph Identifier into the input of character information and then inserting the input of character information. So, using the Glyph Catalogue chaotifies the input of character information.

Adobe and Microsoft have a somewhat similar problem. In developing TrueType Open and OpenType, it was decided that application software should be able to override the drawing intents (feature selectors, rendering intents) defined in the intelligent font model. Since font software creators want to guarantee that font software customers can draw the glyphs they have paid for, Adobe and Heidelberg went on to provide PUA Private Use Area drawing for glyph variants.

This mess has been elevated to standards tracks as well as to the European Federation of National Institutions for Language which reports to Members States and to the Commission.

/hh

Reference:

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2002/tn2079.html

OS X support for OpenType features used by Adobe fonts is limited, and varies among apps

OpenType is simply an extension to the TrueType Specification, like Apple Advanced Typography housed in the SFNT Spline Font File format. Adobe openly opposes TrueType 2, including advanced spacing with kerning of up to 8 glyphs simultaneously, advanced scaling with up to 64 style dimensions simultaneously (no need for multiple font files for ultra, black, semi, normal, light etc when one and only one will do the work), localisable human interface strings in the NameRecord and Feat tables, and so forth. Let's not have the pot calling the kettle black.

/hh

Thanks for all the info everyone.

I understand that there're all sorts of differences between OpenType, TrueType etc. and that these don't lead to great compatibility overall, but what confuses me is how one Apple application (Textedit) has no issues using these glyphs, whereas Pages, an application actually designed for page layout and design does not allow for these to be added. This must be a fault with Pages/Keynote's font handling in particular, unless Textedit uses it's own special font engine that just works. Are there any ways of forcing Pages to use the same font engine as Textedit?

The main font that I have issues with finding glyphs (Requiem - www.typography.com) isn't even an adobe font, but I guess it uses OpenType, so that's where the issues are...

Cheers,

Moses

Are there any ways of forcing Pages to use the same font engine as Textedit?

No. There are various areas where Pages (along with other iWork apps and iWeb) lags behind TextEdit, but perhaps it will catch up in the next edition. You can tell Apple what you want to see here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html

I guess it uses OpenType, so that's where the issues are...

Yes, Apple's alternative (AAT or TrueType 2) has never caught on, so it is gradually expanding its support for the OpenType features used by the rest of the world, but still has a ways to go in this.

Are there any ways of forcing Pages to use the same font engine as Textedit?

No.

Theoretically, one is supposed to be able to plug in a third party CMM Colour Management Module in the ColorSync API in order to control application-dependent processing (see the ColorSync interface), but there is no such solution in principle for character-glyph conversion in any of the three main implementations of the intelligent font model. Apple does have multiple layout mechanisms in the system (see the Apple Font Tool utilities for test software), but there is no interface to select which does what and when.

When advanced imaging architectures for character-glyph transforms and colour-colourant transforms were proposed in developer discussions 1990-1995, one camp worked for application-independent architectures and another camp (Adobe in particular) worked for application-dependent architectures. Microsoft also went for an application-dependent architecture.

Microsoft's text team, correctly, advocated an application-independent architecture, similar to the approach of Apple's text team, but Microsoft's management decided on the application-dependent architecture. This is why the Adobe-Microsoft architecture allows an application to opt out of drawing even if the drawing intent (feature selector, rendering intent) is registered. This poses one set of problems. Apple's problems pose another set of problems, for instance, while Apple advocates use af reshaping ('advanced typography) in Apple iWork User Guides from version 1 to version 4, it omits to mention that Apple itself does not use Apple software for Apple documentation or Apple advertising, and if Apple softwere were used for setting the annual financial accounts statement of Apple Incorporated, using tabular numbers that align correctly through the column, Apple's statement of accounts would be unsearchable due part to problems in Apple's text UI and in part to problems in Apple's system PDF service.

/hh

Interesting.

I recently attempted to use a letter variant of the Zapfino font.
Could not access it in Photoshop but was able to do so in Text Edit and InDesign.

Let's not have the pot calling the kettle black.

I think you misunderstood the point. Regardless of the potential features available in the handful of TrueType 2 fonts provided by Apple, what people normally want to know is whether and how they can use all the features of the vast number of OpenType fonts available from numerous other sources. Apple's support for those features was essentially zero in OS X 10.3 and was steadily improved in later versions, depending on the app. However, it is still limited and not complete.