[scribus] Making more of Open Type Font Features

[ZASKE Martin]

Dear List,

next week I will present the new Scribus to my colleagues during our
annual conference.

I am collecting some relevant features and am preparing examples for
people who would want to give it a try.



I have not yet actively used the Open Type Font Features, but I am aware
that there are certain features which can be useful for literacy
purposes (teaching people the skill of reading).

There are fonts for example which allow the layouter to toggle between
the "classic" shapes of "a" or "g" (as found in many printed novels) and
the "handwritten" shapes. (Try a recent Andika with style set 1, if you
want to see this in action.)

The use of the Font Features tab in the Text Properties window is
straight forward and I have prepared examples by trial.



Now I am looking for a font-viewer or font-browser or font-manager which
lets me see which features any font is offering and what the definitions
are (or characters concerned) for the optional "Stylistic sets", since
Scribus is only numbering them.




I am aware that or commercial or other well prepared typefaces often
include documentation about the options and about the stylistic sets.
But how can I find out about the many fonts already installed on my
machine? (I could of course google the maker for each of them and find
their web documentation.) Is there any provision in Open Type that fonts
"announce their powers" like USB or Bluetooth devices are doing?

I suspected there is some definition about the Stylistic sets, since I
observed that certain of my fonts only offer selections like sets 1 and
5 but not 2, 3, 4. But testing between examples like Andika and Comic
Sans (indeed, good playground for features) they each seem to have their
own definition.



So what does Scribus mean by the numbering of the Style sets please? And
what is a good tool to look into my installed fonts for more information?


Thank you for any specific help re Scribus or any link to good
documentation for offline-use.

Martin


-- 
ZASKE Martin
responsable GʊGʊ
BP 50 - Bassila - Bénin
tel GʊGʊ 66.66.11.11
tel pers 97.44.62.95