III. Adding Glyph Effects


Much of the sophisticated linguistic and layout capability of QuickDraw GX will happen automatically, fuelled by parameters which are implemented in a font's metamorphosis table. Font features are typographic and layout capabilities that can be selected or deselected by an application, and which control many aspects of glyph selection, ordering, and positioning.

Font features include fundamental controls, such as whether or not contextual forms (for example, ligatures) occur by default or at all, and details of appearance such as whether or not alternate initial forms (for example, swash forms) of glyphs should occur at the beginnings of words or lines.

This chapter discusses the 'feat', 'mort' and 'name' tables, which are the primary carriers of glyph effects in GX fonts.

The mort table

Working with the mort table

Fine typography: Letters

Fine typography: Numbers

Typographic expression

Script and language features




Arleigh Movitz (movitz@apple.com)
Dave Opstad (opstad@apple.com)
Kristian Walsh (walsh.k@euro.apple.com)