REAL OpenType is an awesome font format. Based on Unicode, and created by Microsoft and Adobe, it will inevitably become a universal Big standard—sooner or later. thıng by Nick Shinn It’s a babel out there. the multi-lingual international standard of ment of OpenType is for Arabic. With a A single weight of a popular typeface character encoding established in 1991. A set-up of Arabic OpenType fonts and Mi- can exist in many versions, each required full-featured OTF is around 150KB in size crosoft Word with Windows 2000, it’s pos- to work in different circumstances. There and contains about 500 glyphs. sible to set the full range of contextual are formats for different operating systems modifications to character forms that are (Mac/PC), and for different software ONE FILE FITS ALL essential to written Arabic. Hopefully, this (TrueType/Type 1). There are encodings The benefits of a cross-platform format are will bring East and West closer together. for different languages (Latin/Central Eu- simpler font management and the removal Further down this road, OpenType ropean/Greek/etc). For expert typography of text corruptions that occur when encod- leads to the possibility of a universal trans- (alternate figures, small caps, etc), addi- ings don’t match, such as the fi ligature lator. Beam me up! tional fonts are needed. from a Mac file that becomes ? on a PC. But OpenType, a single-platform for- With its large size, an OpenType font VIRTUOSITY ENABLED mat created in 1996 by Adobe and Mi- easily accommodates the standard range of In the aesthetic dimension, an OpenType crosoft, is one big font that does it all. western characters as well as international font may include (as alternate glyphs) all characters such as the euro and the litre, the traditional typographic niceties—old- GENESIS accented characters for Central European style figures, true small caps, fractions, Adobe introduced the Type 1 font in 1984, languages such as Croatian and Polish, swashes, superiors, inferiors, ornaments, and this format became the standard for and even Cyrillic and Greek characters. and optical scaling. All manner of liga- the graphics industry, on the Macintosh. Perhaps the most significant develop- tures as well, for contextual adjustments to Microsoft’s TrueType then came along to otherwise rigid letterforms. This feature of dominate the PC world. OpenType is manipulated on the fly by In- More sophisticated formats—Apple’s Design, substituting the appropriate glyph GX, and Adobe’s Multiple Master—were when cued by a particular sequence of launched in the early 90s, but failed. In coded characters. In a traditional serifed 1999, Adobe stopped making new Type 1 face, e.g. Minion or Adobe Caslon, this and Multiple Master fonts. gives set text a well-mannered subtlety. In In 2000, the first OpenType fonts were a script (Zapfino, Caflisch), the text ap- released. They were based on Unicode, pears convincingly handwritten. 14 Graphic Exchange Cornucopia of glyphs Adobe’s standard OpenType character set has 246 members, replacing the ISO-Adobe set and adding the euro, estimate, litre, and 14 Mac “symbol” characters. Beyond that it’s up to the type designer what to include. Different combinations of alternates are applicable through the OpenType menu (see over) via InDesign and Photoshop, for instance “Swash” or “Fractions”. Other glyphs, such as “Th” and the orna- ments shown here, are inserted manually. Adobe Caslon Pro Italic contains 674 glyphs: • Latin capitals • Figures • Swash capitals Lining tabular • Latin lowercase Lining proportional • Latin lowercase alts Oldstyle tabular Swash Oldstyle proportional Superiors Superscript • Latin ligatures Scientific Inferior • Currency Numerator • Punctuation & marks Denominator • Ornaments & dingbats Fractions Mathematic operators There are no small caps in this italic font. But it does include the archaic long s, with ligatures. As an indication of the sheer scope of OpenType, the format contains a “hist” feature which could be used to automate the necessary substitution for 18th Century setting, although there is as yet no corresponding attribute in InDesign— wouldn’t that be wicked! A far cry from the 128 characters of so it will be interesting to see the Open- PLUS ÇA CHANGE ascii, or the 256 glyphs in a PostScript Type version of the van Blokland/van While the sheer number of glyphs seems font, there are a possible 65,000 glyphs in Rossum face Kozmik later this year. One limitless, in practice OpenType fonts work an OpenType font! day someone may even inject motion into seamlessly, just like any other font on your In theory, separate word-glyphs could an OpenType font, and each idiosyncratic hard drive. Adobe is converting most of its be created for complete vocabularies—an character will Flash to life. library into Standard OpenType fonts that impossible task for a type designer, but not But, returning to reality, it’s worth men- contain almost exactly the same characters beyond the scope of a robotic software tioning that text set in OpenType, no mat- as a regular font, and these will have the app. That tool already exists—Robofog— ter how many ligatures, is fully editable. primary OpenType benefit of cross-plat- Graphic Exchange 15 One code to rule them all Comparable to the Human Genome form usefulness. So far only 14 Adobe type- Project, Unicode provides a “unique, faces have been given the superior Pro des- universal, uniform” code for every character in almost every language of the ignation, with expert features supported by world, as well as for symbols such as the software such as InDesign and Photoshop; Euro. In Unicode, characters are defined however, these are mainly conversions of as “the smallest semantic units of a Multiple Master fonts. language,” and glyphs as “the specific form characters can take in a font”. While Adobe has produced the vast This distinction means that with majority of OpenType faces, two more in- OpenType fonts, expert typographic teresting examples come from elsewhere. features can be applied to text without Zuzana Licko’s Mrs Eaves was, of course, a altering the base Unicode character values, facilitating spellchecking, prime candidate; Licko had already (1996) importing/exporting, and copying. created a menagerie of bizarre ligatures for ment organizations, particularly those that The relationship between characters her riff on Baskerville, activated by the pro- deal with many languages, will take to the and glyphs varies: prietary LigatureMaker software. More re- format. With OpenType fonts in Windows One to one cently, House Industries designed Simian XP, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, or as an OpenType font, with all-cap ligatures Mac OS X, it’s possible to change key- = or or a a that relate not so much to the traditional boards (i.e. keyboard drivers) in mid-text, Many to one typographic source of ligatures—the writ- switching from, for example, English ten word—but rather to lettered logotypes. (Latin) to Croatian (CE) copy without + + = ffl f f l Adobe (or is it ITC?) has not yet gone missing a beat. One to many to town on Avant Garde, for which Herb Lubalin designed a fine collection of his CHANGE-OPHOBIA = + à a ` trademark ultra-tight ligatures. Quite apart from functionality is the ques- tion of inertia. If you already know how to THE COUNTER FORCES do something (such as work with Latin Simplify So much for hype. To sum up, OpenType and CE fonts), the inconvenience of even tricky typography provides the benefits of cross-platform con- a small change will mitigate against the sistency, improved language support, and move to a more productive workflow. the capability of expert typography. But On the question of cost: OpenType this vision of excellence is clouded by fonts are a good value compared with Post- practicality. Script or TrueType, if you’re buying a new Type 1: Three fonts required, with special keying for the ffl ligature: Adobe Garamond Although OpenType fulfills the vision- typeface. But persuading your boss (or Italic, Expert Italic, and Alternate Italic. ary goals of its architects, widespread im- yourself) to replace a typeface you already OpenType: Adobe Garamond Pro Italic, plementation may face significant hurdles, have is tough. And if you want expert fea- with OpenType “Swash” attribute applied. including its lack of integration with tures and don’t use InDesign, forget it. The text remains editable. QuarkXPress, a paucity of exciting new The largest impediment to the wide- fonts, and weak controls for OpenType in spread adoption of OpenType is the indif- InDesign. ference of QuarkXPress, which, from the Type 1: Small Cap and Expert fonts, with Idealism is a hard sell, even at par. And vantage point of almost complete domina- special keying for the fraction. OpenType fonts cost more. Sure, the extra tion of the market for page layout software, OpenType: One font, with standard key- features represent good value, but for the is in no rush to support the big gizmo of its ing, and OT “fraction” attribute applied. average typographer who works on one only feasible competitor, Adobe InDesign. platform and in one language, the percep- Of course, OpenType fonts work just as tion is that you’re paying for stuff you don’t well as Type 1 in QuarkXPress, with added need. Nonetheless, there are significant cross-platform benefits, but the expert typo- markets, such as fine book publishing. graphic features are inaccessible. John D. Berry has used Minion Pro for a large book of poetry and found it to be a INDESIGN FAILS TO CAPITALIZE Top: Adobe Caslon Pro with OpenType “Discretionary ligatures” attribute. considerable time-saver (see www.creative- Left to spearhead OpenType, however, Bottom: The “Th” ligature is applied by pro.com/story/feature/16934.html, Putting Adobe hasn’t taken advantage of one of In- default (“Ligatures” in the styling palette).