Hi,
For a font I'm working on I consider combining two styles in one font as stylistic sets, instead of creating two separated fonts, one is squared, the other rounded, ss01, ss02, each will include the entire characters set.
In addition to that, I have 3 alternate glyphs that I wish to be activated according to the user's decision, for each style, let's say the letters /A /C /E - The font user should be able to activate one ,two or all the alternates, for each style.
I wonder what is the elegant way to do it?
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However, as noted by James Puckett most people don't know how to use Stylistic Sets. The Gabriola font in Windows is a good example of a font with several stylistic sets.
There again, if font designers never include Stylistic Sets in their fonts, users will never learn about them. I include all kinds of OpenType features in my Garava font, but it's primarily for testing purposes. I don't even use most of the features myself very often.
Separate fonts does have the advantage of being easy to understand (just pick a font), but it does have some disadvantages. For instance, you can't have cross-font kerning. If the sets can be mixed, being able to include kerning among glyphs from different sets is an advantage having it all in one font. If the sets are mutually exclusive (like some kind of global change), then maybe separate fonts probably makes more sense anyway.
I understand the "Marketing" and operational aspects of packing features. On the other hand, there are 5 weights for each style, so splitting will result with 10 fonts, which is another type of hassle imo. (plus, I market my font families as a whole, not selling weights and styles individually, so there's no advantage for having many styles to pick from)
Anyway, If I'll eventually decide to merge the styles after all, I wonder what is the best practice for these needs? like, 2 stylistic sets and 6 salt or maybe 12 stylistic sets?
After all, one of these two styles will serve as the default set and the other can be accessed as ss01. ss02 can be then used for your alternate aleph, zain, and mem.
The only problem you might face with this (apart from the issues already raised that some people might not know how to use them) is that some software designers (yes, Apple, I’m talking about you) treat stylistic sets as being mutually exclusive.
Also, you'd earlier suggested putting your alternate ’, z and m in 'salt'. If you do that I’d recommend duplicating this in a stylistic set as well since InDesign doesn't provide easy access to 'salt' (apart from using the glyph palette).
This used to be true, but it's been fixed for a while (Apple Pages shown):
Unfortunately, they still make it difficult to find or discover.
The only app I know of that still does this wrong is MS Word.
Couldn't make any of the OT features work for Adobe PS CC though
Thanks a lot for all your help!