OpenType FontsA Format for the New Millennium

OpenType Fonts A Format for the New Millennium

PostScript Type 1 and TrueType fonts have several limitations: They have different formats for each computer platform, and the character sets for each platform differ. This makes it difficult to share documents easily. Both formats contain fewer than 256 glyphs in a font, which limits both the ability to work with some languages and access to the special characters used in fine typography.

At the end of the "font wars" (see the preceding sidebar, "A Short History of Fonts"), Adobe and Microsoft began developing a new format that encompasses the best features of the other two formats and goes beyond them. Introduced in 1996, OpenType has truly become the font format for the new millennium.

The Advantages of OpenType

OpenType fonts have several advantages over PostScript and TrueType fonts:

• OpenType fonts can contain thousands of characters, many more than the earlier font formats. They support an international standard for character encoding called Unicode. This gives them the ability to process, display, and print text using the diverse languages of the modern world.

• All font information is stored in a single file, rather than in the separate screen and printer-font files used by PostScript fonts. The same file format works equally well on Macintosh and Windows operating systems.

• Even better for creative professionals, many OpenType fonts available from Adobe and other font vendors come with extended character sets that can include additional language support and features like fractions, ligatures, and other typographic effects.

What's a Glyph?

OpenType fonts include glyphsprobably a new term for all those of us who are not long-term typeoholics. A glyph is a particular shape within a fontsuch as a letter, symbol, or alternate letterform like a ligature, small cap, or swashused to represent a character code onscreen or on paper. For example, the character A can have several shapes in a font, including the swash A and a small-caps A. Each of them is a glyph. The body text of this book uses an OpenType font, Minion Pro Regular. Figure 6-4 shows the glyphs of the letter A contained in this font.

Figure 6-4. There are several glyphs of the letter A in an OpenType font like Minion Pro Regular.

Unified OpenType Support

Adobe Creative Suite 2 provides unified support for OpenType font features. InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, and Photoshop CS2 now support all the glyphs in any OpenType font. All three applications provide ways to apply OpenType features easily.

When you install the Suite, you'll find more than 160 OpenType fonts installed for use with your CS2 applications. You can purchase additional OpenType fonts from Adobe or other font vendors. Adobe has made its entire type library available in the OpenType format. Today, there are around 9,000 fonts available as OpenType.

Tip: Locating the Adobe Creative Suite 2 OpenType Fonts.

It's not immediately obvious where Adobe Creative Suite 2 puts the OpenType fonts that it installs. On a Macintosh, these fonts are installed in this path: Library > Application Support > Adobe > Fonts. In Windows, these are found in this path: Program Files > Common Files > Adobe > Fonts. If you like, you can remove these fonts and put them in another font location for your operating system, or for use by your font-management software. Just be sure to leave the Reqrd folder in that Fonts folder to avoid trouble opening some of your CS2 applications.

InDesign

OpenType features are available in InDesign CS2 from the Control or Character palette, by including them in a paragraph or character style, or when using the Find/Change command. For example, if you have an OpenType font that supports fractions, you can select text that contains a fraction, and choose OpenType > Fractions from the Control or Character palette menu to call out fractions built into the font or (in some OpenType fonts) to arbitrarily build a true fraction (see Figure 6-5).

Figure 6-5. In InDesign CS2, apply a typographic effect like true-built fractions from the OpenType menu of the Control or Character palette.

Illustrator and Photoshop

In Illustrator CS2, you can call out OpenType features from the OpenType palette (Window > Type > OpenType). Here you can select available OpenType features by clicking a button or choosing from the menu. You can also include them in character and paragraph styles. In Photoshop CS2, OpenType features are available from the Character palette menu.

You also have access to OpenType fonts from the Glyphs palette in InDesign and Illustrator (see the next section).

OpenType Magic

Now that you know that you already have some OpenType fonts, how can you tell which of your fonts are OpenType? In Adobe Creative Suite 2 applications, it's easy. You can look in the font menu and recognize the OpenType fonts by the "O" icon. But not all OpenType fonts have extra glyphs or features. Use the Glyphs palette (described in the "Picking Glyphs" section that follows) to see which characters are found in the font.

Tip: Use the Name as a Clue

Some OpenType fonts (for example, those installed by newer versions of Windows or Microsoft Office software) are merely a repackaging of old TrueType fonts in an OpenType "wrapper."They don't actually contain any extra glyphs or special features. Adobe indicates that an OpenType font has extra features by how it names the font: Most fonts that have "Std" appended to their name contain extra glyphs and features available. Those that have "Pro" appended have some additional language support as well as extra glyphs and features.

OpenType's Extra Typographic Effects

The actual typographic features built into an OpenType font vary by font. In the OpenType submenu in InDesign CS2, features that are in square brackets are not available. Features that are selected have a check mark next to them. In the OpenType palette in Illustrator CS2, the buttons for unavailable features are grayed.

Here are some examples of the magic of working with OpenType fonts:

• When an OpenType font contains small caps, you can apply the small caps feature to change lowercase text to small capital letters. This creates small caps whose weight matches the upper and lowercase letters, as opposed to using fake small caps by scaling down the caps, which will be thinner than the letters around them. Note that InDesign will still use fake small caps when real ones are unavailable.

• If a font contains swash glyphs, ordinary glyphs are substituted with a more stylized alternative. Sometimes these are contextual, which means they only occur in specified situations, such as between two particular letters or at the beginning or end of a word.

• Ligatures are letters that are combined together for example, fi or fl. Adobe OpenType Pro fonts usually include additional ligatures like ffi, ffl, and ff. Sometimes there may also be a discretionary ligature feature, which includes more rarely used discretionary and historical ligatures.

Figure 6-6. OpenType fonts contain extra typographic effects. The table compares how type looks with and without the OpenType features for small caps, swashes, and ligatures.

InDesign CS2 expands its support to new OpenType features: It now supports slashed zero and stylistic sets. If you select the Slashed Zero option in the OpenType submenu of the Control or Character palette menu, InDesign displays the number 0 with a slash through it. In some fonts the number 0 and the letter O can be difficult to distinguish.

A stylistic set is a group of glyph alternates that can be applied one character at a time or to a range of text. If you select the Stylistic Set option, the glyphs defined in the set are used instead of the font's default glyphs. You can see the glyphs for each set using the Glyphs palette (see the next section).

Tip: Download the OpenType User Guide

To get more information about the features of your OpenType fonts and how to use them, refer to Adobe's excellent OpenType User Guide. You can download it from http://store.adobe.com/type/opentype/.

Picking Glyphs

InDesign CS2 and Illustrator CS2 both have a Glyphs palette (Type > Glyphs). This palette (Figure 6-7) allows you to see all the glyphs in any font PostScript, TrueType and OpenType and easily add them to text. Use the Zoom-in and Zoom-out buttons to control your view. Double-clicking a glyph in the palette either inserts it in text or replaces a selected character.

Figure 6-7. In Illustrator CS2 and InDesign CS2, the Glyphs palette gives you access to all the glyphs of any font. In an OpenType font, you can click and hold the small triangle next to a character to see alternate glyphs.

Another quick way to see what features are in a particular OpenType font is to use the Show pop-up menu in the Glyphs palette. Choose an available category from the menu for example, Standard Ligatures. Only the glyphs for that feature will appear in the palette. Choose Entire Font to see all the glyphs displayed.

Click and hold the small triangle next to any character to see the alternate glyphs available for that character.

Font Features in CS2 Applications

Table 6-1 summarizes some of the font features in the CS2 applications.

Table 6-1. Font Features of the CS2 Applications

Font Feature	InDesign	Illustrator	Photoshop
Supports PostScript Type 1 and TrueType Fonts	Yes	Yes	Yes
Supports All Glyphs of OpenType fonts	Yes	Yes	Yes (but you may have to select some glyphs in Illustrator and copy them to Photoshop)
WYSIWYG Font Menus	Yes	Yes	Yes
Find Font Dialog Box	Yes	Yes	No
Selecting OT Features	Control & Character palettes, include in styles, Find/Change dialog box	OpenType palette, include in styles	Character palette
Glyphs Palette	Yes	Yes	No