Something I run into all the time is a customer trying to use a font with OpenType features in an application that doesn't support it. I usually search font "(application name) OpenType support" and sift through forum posts but it's hard to know for sure without installing the app and testing it. I'm starting this thread to list the applications I know of that don't have basic OpenType feature support. If you know of any application with no OpenType support, please add them to this thread.
By basic OpenType support, I mean contextual alternates (calt) and kerning (kern). This should be based on the current version of the app.
Here's what I've got so far:
- AutoCad
- GIMP
- Sketchup
- SolidWorks
Comments
Adobe After Effects has limited support. For example, if you set some text containing alternate characters in Illustrator, copy the text, and paste in After Effects, the formatting, including the alternate characters, will be preserved. But there is no glyphs palette or OpenType feature panel in After Effects, although you can choose small caps in the character palette. It also supports contextual alternates and ligatures, but no user control (they are always on by default).
Apple Motion supports contextual alternates by default, but doesn't support other OpenType features, not even standard ligatures, as far as I can tell. It's possible to open the standard system Font panel and, from there, open the Typography panel. It shows all the OT features present in the current font, but checking or unchecking them has no effect on the text. I would say that OT support is broken in Motion.
It's really too bad apps like these don't offer better typographic support, considering how often type is used in video.
Desktop Apps :
ImageMagick version 6 definitely has no support for features. But there seem to be projects to improve it. This means just support the parameters and hand-over to the underlying libraries (Freetype, Pango).
Every few years or so I get around to toying with LyX as well, to check if its OT support finally offers something sufficiently unique to justify learning all its attendant bollocks.
The holy grail for me would be to finally have a working Latin script JALT implementation, something like what Simon cryptically demonstrates here. Ideally also tying into a width axis. Scribus is the closest thing I’ve seen short of subscribing to InDesign.
No support for OpenType features.
I asked if their next edition (PSP 2024, I suppose) will support these features.
The vague answer lets me suspect that it isn't the case!
The default text shaper in InDesign 2024 is still the Adobe Composer and as far as I can tell it does not seem to be using Harfbuzz—or if it is, they are going out of their way to be stupid in how they use it.
However, as long as you switch InDesign to the Adobe World-Ready Composer(s) (either single-line or paragraph) Harfbuzz is clearly in use and behaving as hoped-for.
At least, this is what I am gathering from testing Google’s Material Symbols on the new apps.
Contrariwise, Photoshop 2024 *does* indeed do the right things for shaping, right out of the box!
Illustrator 2024 on the other hand... has even broken 'rlig' (!), which is a significant regression. And offers no way to toggle composers. And the other functionality I am seeking is still broken… unless you paste the text in from Photoshop, in which case it works fine! So there is a crazy workaround there: start by pasting in some text from Photoshop and just keep editing that, probably it will remain fine. (I suspect you could even paste into that area of “good text” as unformatted and you would be ok.)
Since Indesign CS6 Indesign had a bug with the comma character in world-ready composer. World-ready composer understood comma as Latin character, not as neutral character.
I know this because my Hebrew fonts have contextual alternates using punctuation and always went wrong with comma but not with the other punctuation characters.
Even using Harfbuzz with Indesign 2023.
Finally, in Indesign 2024 Harfbuzz works right!
Until Indesign CS5.5 ME you could mix regular font versions with bold or others from the same family font, and Contextual OpenType features still worked.
This is not possible anymore even using Indesign 2024.
The Adobe CS 5.5 ME was the last Indesign ME from Winsoft, after CS6 Adobe bought from Winsoft the ME features and the rest is history.
Adobe has released Photoshop Elements 2024.
Does anybody know if it supports OpenType features, and which ones?
Thanks in advance!
Thank you Mark. I'll try Affinity Photo (one month!)
Stopped it with Task Manager and tried again (4 times). Same result!
So I uninstall this ... piece of software!