Do you have any fond OpenType memories? I remember it was a kick to see features gradually get added to Adobe apps. Was Photoshop 7 the first to support some features or CS? I wonder if on its 50th birthday, Inkscape and GIMP will finally support some OT features. I started adding OT features to my fonts in 2002...not quite 20 years yet.
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I had written this piece “introducing” it in 2002.
A little later, I was spending a year back in England with Karey, my wife, who was doing an MA in Norwich, 2004-5. All I took with me was a laptop, and I worked in a room the size of a closet on an 18th century writing desk I bought at a local auction, developing a Latin-Greek-Cyrillic suite with lots of OpenType features, aided by discourse at Typophile.com. That really brought home the scope of OpenType, and power of the internet. Later that year (2005), I gave a workshop on using contextual alternates in a script font, at TypeCon in New York, along with Thomas Phinney and Adam Twardoch. The first “handwriting” fonts to feature that, apart from Caflisch Script, were Zapfino, Dear Sarah, and my Handsome Pro. I also recall a sans serif style that mixed differently horizontally scaled glyphs, programmed by Tal Leming, from round about that time—an emergent use of the tech.
It took way longer to get where we are on OT support than I hoped or expected. Where we are is not bad (especially as of a few years ago), but there is still a ways to go.
It's kind of shocking that OT support in web browsers is more robust than on desktop design apps.
Liam R E Quin just sent me this, so at least Inkscape is getting there