The Ornament Sets feature type specifies non-letter ornament sets
of glyphs.
This is an exclusive feature.
Dingbats are symbols such as arrows, stars, and pointing hands used for occasional emphasis in display.
Pi characters are a set of related symbols designed for a particular purpose (e.g. cartography, commerce or musical notation) which do not make up a formal alphabet.
Fleurons are ornaments in the shape of flowers, vine leaves, and so on.
These are glyphs designed to be used in interlocking or repeating patterns as borders for text.
International Symbols are glyphs representing standard, internationally-recognizable icons, such as those below:
These are special symbols used in setting mathematics or logic text.
The radio button selectors for this type simply select different
sets of glyphs in a font. For example, a font with twenty ampersands
could place them in twenty selectors under this feature type. Use of
the Style Options feature type is, however, preferred when
feasible.
If alternatives are being used, then the first setting for the
feature should be "No Alternates". Because the No Alternatives
setting implies no change from the basic font, no editor is required
for this setting.
Character Alternatives an exclusive feature.
Each font has its own alternate characters defined by the
typographer.
The Design Complexity feature type controls the overall appearance
of the font. It can be used to allow a single font to
contain plain glyphs, italic glyphs, calligraphic chancery glyphs,
etc.
Design Level 1 should be available for any font which utilizes this
feature type, it should always be the simplest variant of the font,
and it should generally be the default setting. This is
however a guideline, not a rule: some fonts which are normally quite
ornate but have a simpler alternative (eg. Apple Chancery) would have
a higher design level as their default to obey the "increasing
ornateness for increasing design level" rule.
The remaining design levels progress from simplest to most complex.
As can be seen from Apple Chancery above, you don't have to call
these settings "Design Level n", but be aware that some applications
will alphabetically sort the names you give these levels, which can
lead to confusion. For example, Apple Chancery's design levels are,
in order:
(1) Simple Design Level
(2) Elegant Design Level [default]
(3) Flourishes, set A
(4) Flourishes, set B
... but these are alphabeticised to:
(2) Elegant Design Level [default]
(3) Flourishes, set A
(4) Flourishes, set B
(1) Simple Design Level
An alternative would be to explictly state the design level, as shown
below:
(1) 1. Simple Design Level
(2) 2. Elegant Design Level [default]
(3) 3. Flourishes, set A
(4) 4. Flourishes, set B
where the addition of the initial number forces the names into
their correct order.
Like most effects, Design Level effects should come before Smart
Swashes in the mort table, so that special swash forms can
be assigned to the new glyphs introduced by the Design Level.
Design Level is an exclusive feature.
The Style Options feature type allows the font designer to group
together collections of non-contextual substitutions into named sets.
In an application, if the end user wants the normal designs, the "No
Style Options" feature selector should be chosen.
These categories are not meant to be restrictive. If you have a
legitimate typographic need for something even subtly but inescapably
distinct, send a link to Apple.
This is an exclusive feature.
This is for glyphs designed to emphasize the unique appearance of the design at display sizes, typically above 24 point.
This is for glyphs with contrasting strokes parallel to the main strokes, as shown below:
Engraved characters are designed to look like they're engraved in stone (as in the example below), or to emulate the shaded lettering style often used in old metal-plate engraving.
This is for capital letter glyphs with decoration filling the whitespace surrounding the glyph, in the manner used by medieval scribes:
This converts capital letters to a special titling form.
This is for capitals that extend above the ordinary capital height.
The Cursive Connection feature type is used for
cursively-connected scripts. It is required for Arabic, but may be
used for other scripts as well.
The "Cursive" selector is used to select full, contextual connection
of letterforms. The Cursive setting will be the default in Arabic
fonts. This setting could well be used for Roman fonts, even though
the controls required for this are buried in the dialog.
This is an exclusive feature.
The Unconnected selector disables cursive connection altogether.
The Partially Connected selector can be used to select pre-drawn letterforms that connect in a non-contextual manner.
However, as can be seen from the second line above, no attempt is made to keep the individual glyphs joined-up: when the text is justified, inter-glyph space can be inserted between letters.
The Smart Swashes feature type controls contextual swash
substitution.
The first four selectors control swashes that get substituted at the
beginnings or ends of words or whole lines. The Non-Finals selector
specifies forms that are used at the beginning or middle of
words--archaic long 's' can be specified this way.
The features are cumulative: none, all, or any combination may be on
at one time.
Note that only line and word ends trigger these things. Point size
changes, font changes, etc., do not.
TrueEdit uses the same editor for all Smart Swashes effects:
The editor window is divided into three sections: Punctuation (top left), Special glyphs (top right), and the swash glyphs (bottom).
To add swash forms for a glyph, drag its normal form into the "Glyph" live area (bottom left), and then drag the corresponding swash forms into the other five columns.
The Punctuation and Special fields contain glyphs used to decide what constitutes a word or line break (for application of line and word initial and final swash effects).
To add all swash types to a font, you must add those swash-type features to the 'mort' table. For example, you cannot add Line Final swashes to a font just by filling the appropriate column in this editor: you must also add the "Line Final Swashes" feature to the font's 'mort' table.