Re: Standaridized variation sequences for the Desert alphabet?

From: Alastair Houghton <alastair_at_alastairs-place.net>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 15:32:55 +0100

On 27 Mar 2017, at 14:49, Michael Everson <everson_at_evertype.com> wrote:

>> 3) Font features (e.g. 1855 vs. 1859) to select shapes in the same font
>
> Font trickery. Not portable. Not supported by most apps.

I wouldn’t describe it as “trickery” or “not portable”. Features like stylistic alternates are part of the OpenType specification, and actually have quite widespread support in Mac software (check out the Typography panel, which you can get to from the system Font Panel). On Windows and Linux, support is more limited, though software that uses the newer DirectWrite or Pango APIs to render text should find it straightforward enough.

I don’t know how this bears on the discussion about Deseret (that’s outside my area of expertise), but as a software developer I’d certainly *prefer* to see font features used (rather than, say, assigning a new code point or using variation selectors) where the primary difference is in the rendering rather than the meaning.

Kind regards,

Alastair.

--
http://alastairs-place.net
Received on Mon Mar 27 2017 - 09:33:24 CDT

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