Swapping Alternate and Default Form

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Connor Davenport
Connor Davenport Posts: 36
in Font Technology
Hi there! Does anyone know of a method for simply just swapping an alternate form for the default form in an OTF/TTF. I think I'm just totally over thinking this but I dont know. Thanks in advance.

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  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
    Connor Davenport said:
    Hi there! Does anyone know of a method for simply just swapping an alternate form for the default form in an OTF/TTF. I think I'm just totally over thinking this but I dont know. Thanks in advance.
    I think your question is unclear. Do you mean OT usage in the end user's application? Replacing defaults with alternates automatically in a font creation tool of your choice?
  • Connor Davenport
    Connor Davenport Posts: 36
    @Adam Jagosz  Sorry about that—I have mastered files but I want a custom version of the font where the alternates are the defaults. Does that make sense?
  • Robert Janes
    Robert Janes Posts: 4
    It'd be best to do it when exporting the OTF/TFF files from your font editor. For example in Glyphs there's the "Rename Glyphs" instance parameter.
  • Connor Davenport
    Connor Davenport Posts: 36
    @Robert Janes thanks man—unfortunately I was working from mastered files, but i ended up using @Adam Twardoch's awesome pyftfeatfreeze tool
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,447
    You could also use TTX to dump the cmap table and remap the character codes to the glyphs you prefer.
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 1,003
    Of course, however, <cmap> remap won’t help if you want the existing features to take on the opposite behavior.

    For example, if Stylistic Set 1 originally substitutes single-story a in place of default double-story, and you now want to swap the single in as default and have the feature then swap in the double as the alternate, then you’ll need to also edit the fea code accordingly.

  • Connor Davenport
    Connor Davenport Posts: 36
    @John Hudson @Kent Lew Thank you both very much! 

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