On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 07:57:22PM +0100, Hans Hagen wrote: > Khaled Hosny wrote: > >> Currently, when defining a font feature one has to enable all features >> by hand which is IMHO not very user friendly as it implies prior >> knowledge about OpenType font features and the meaning of each one, not >> every Arabic user, for example, knows what does 'init', 'medi, etc. >> ligatures mean yet to know that he must enable them to get proper font >> rendering. >> >> I think some font features should be on by default, so that >> \definefontfeature[script=arabic] should be enough to get an Arabic font >> rendered correctly with the default features as its designer intended >> (designers assume that certain will be on while other are off by >> default, like liga vs. dlig), and if some one wants to disable a certain >> default feature he can turn it off, not the reverse. >> >> Microsoft's OpenType features list page >> (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/features_ae.htm) gives a "UI >> suggestion" for each feature noting if it should be on by default, I >> think those are what most OpenType enable by default (at least the ones >> I tested). > > i've been thinking of a features=default option (as there is already > features=yes|no) > > even then it can never be fully automatic as some usage of fonts (think > of verbatim) demands devation from defaults > > now, if we implement a default list then we first need to make a > detailed list of what the supposed defaults are (and i'm not sure if ms > is the only resource for that; after all, not all machineries support > all features)
I didn't find any other sources, and this seem to be the only published source of such information. > a related issue is that fonts can be used for different languages and > scripts and therefore a more dynamic feature switching might be needed > i.e. arabic might need init, but when the same font is used for latin it > not handy to have it enabled, so there might be a matrix of features / > scripts needed I think we can make default features per script (HarfBuzz seems to do that). > if it was trivial i'd already done it -) I know :) just my two cents. > (implementing is trivial but i don't want to make the wrong decision > here as it will influence compatibility) I see. -- Khaled Hosny Arabic localizer and member of Arabeyes.org team
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