Accessing OT features in InDesign

Matthew Butterick

Is there an easier way to do this than using the fiddly popup menus on the Character palette? E.g., an addon palette.

Mark Simonson

One could create character- or paragraph-based style sheets that apply OT features, and are easily accessed from existing palettes. I agree that an OT palette in InDesign would be a big improvement.

Ermin Međedović

Especially stylistic set segment.

Mark Simonson

Seems like an opportunity for an enterprising plugin developer. Curious that it's gone so long with no one taking advantage of it.

James Puckett

Curious that it's gone so long with no one taking advantage of it.

I don’t think enough designers understand what OpenType is to make a profitable OpenType panel plugin. There are still big agencies that have a policy of always using optical kerning because none of the partners understand that fonts come with kerning tables. It would really need to be something one of the big foundries did to encourage people to buy and use fonts with lots of features.

Nick Shinn

I first critiqued the implementation of OT in InDesign ten years ago.
Apparently it’s not a priority!
http://www.shinntype.com/Writing/BigThing.pdf

But hey, we’ve had 10 years of OpenType!
That’s worth celebrating, I would say—something to hype those agency partners.

Did I miss something from Microsoft or Adobe?

Mark Simonson

Ugh. Optical spacing in InDesign is bad for well-spaced fonts and a disaster for connecting scripts. I've even seen examples of ruined spacing of script fonts in professional graphic design magazines. You'd think they'd know better.