Dreaming of a new feature syntax

Michael Rafailyk

@John Hudson
Sure, the kerning is different per masters, that works fine.

But I have a gpos feature in a stylistic set that align small caps vertically on capitals. It's inspired by this comment of @Ray Larabie.

feature ss01 {
  featureNames {
    name "Small Caps centered on Capitals";
  };

  @sc = [A.sc-Z.sc]; # +all others .sc
  pos @sc <0 50 0 0>;
  # +horizontal adjustment for some specific combinations

}

John Hudson

I’m guessing that you’re probably going to need to build the variable font via a UFO fontmake workflow, and edit the feature code manually in each master UFO. Unless someone has a tool or script that does this somewhere else in the toolchain.

Michael Rafailyk

Thanks John.
That's much deeper level of type development that what I'm currently at, but looks like I'll have to install Python anyway and learn terminal commands and pitfalls. Good, added into to-do list.

Erwin Denissen

This can be done with FontCreator. It allows you to add it through the OpenType Designer, but it also supports the variable fea syntax.

languagesystem latn dflt;

@sc = [a.smcp-z.smcp];

feature ss01 { # Stylistic Set 1
    featureNames {
        name "Small Caps centered on Capitals";
    };
    pos @sc <(wght=400:0 wght=700:0) (wght=400:50 wght=700:80)
      (wght=400:0 wght=700:0) (wght=400:0 wght=700:0)>;
} ss01;

Simon Cozens

FontTools also supports the same proposed variable feature file syntax. I always build my variable fonts this way.