The case is specific, but the question is general:
I'd like to have italic text in Serbian Cyrillic on a website. The font supports it but the default italic introduces Russian forms that differ from Serbian (low б, г, д, п, and т). Is there an easy way to enable Serbian italic glyphs in the text? I assume Serbian forms are packed as stylistic alternates and accessed through the OT feature.
Thanks
0
Comments
They are generally handled via the OT 'locl' feature (not stylistic alternates, or at least not only), which allows them to be applied automatically by supporting apps such as browsers. For this to work, the person authoring the text needs to tag it appropriately, so the browser knows it is Serbian Cyrillic.
The use case example given in the CSS Fonts Module spec is someone working with a font that supports SRB but not MKD, but wants to use Balkan glyph forms for Macedonian text. Even though the text is tagged as Macedonian, the CSS can provide SRB locl behaviour as a preference.
Another example I can think of is local preference to use the Balkan forms even when reading non-Balkan languages such as Russian.
If the locl feature in web browsers is active by default, then the CSS part is not needed, and it will be enough to just specify the lang attribute for the HTML element.