OpenType Support

**jwhitham** · 13 July 2013, 05:40 PM

Sort of. Not being able to see them in Character Map means you have to know what is available in order to use them.

**angelize** · 13 July 2013, 06:55 PM

Open Type fonts can also contain more than just extra ligatures. Some contain extra glyphs with different styles of ascenders and descenders, swashes, small caps and more. Support for this in Designer Pro would be very nice.

**gwpriester** · 13 July 2013, 10:37 PM

So here go Gary, I'm a helpful bod ... go learn about Ligatures yourself and then enlighten others, here's a good start: http://opentype.info/blog/2012/11/20/whats-a-ligature/

You could also point out that I misspelled precious. Thanks for the link. I'm not sure how managed to hold down jobs in advertising as an art director at Y&R LA and SF for 20 years and run my own graphic design business for 10 years without this knowledge.

My point being that if you really want that kind of control, then get Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. Designer Pro has never claimed to be a substitute for these programs any more than they have implied you will never need to use Photoshop again.

Designer does have very good tracking and kerning controls, and on the occasions when you want to really fine tune your type, they offer a good solution. A ligature or a set of ligatures is fine as long as the other characters are properly kerned.

This discussion is getting tedious. You're not getting a spiff because there is no bug. Live with it.

**slavelle** · 14 July 2013, 01:58 AM

On a related note: I recently had to take a bunch of text from a number of PDF files that were produced from Illustrator (for some reason - all they had in them was text in two columns) and when I copy/pasted it into Joomla (or whatever web text editor you would care for), there were a bunch of these "combined characters" throughout the documents - places like sta"ff", "fl"ame, and all sorts of others. What a huge pain to have to go back and replace all of these characters with regular text.

So if you think you will ever need to use your content in a web document, be aware!

**humblenations** · 14 July 2013, 06:13 AM

Originally Posted by gwpriester

This discussion is getting tedious.

I thought the forum was called 'Talk Graphics' ... I know I'm new here ... but I thought this made interesting reading for people if they didn't know about how type works ... learning about new things is always good. When I did my degree in design at St Martains back in the nineties it was one of the first lectures we had - learning about Gutenberg and all that sort of stuff. Knowledge is power. I think you are being a little bit rude to me as a new member. I also see that although you quoted my post ... you actually deleted it as well. I assume you deleted it because you are a moderator. The classic 'fi' and 'Th' problems have been around since we first put words to type. I don't really think its going massively off topic by talking about ligatures as well.

Also at this stage I'll say. Once I've saved up enough money for the upgrade for the different weight support I'm going to buy it. It is a massive improvement over X5 Pro which is what I'm using at the moment. If only because I can use fonts I've paid for now. And there is a lot of them ... believe you me. Running into hundreds of pounds.

The reason I use Xara is because it's fast and it's cheap. I just wish it was a little more professional when it comes to it's type handling. I guess we all use it for different things. Have different ways of looking at it. Just because you don't really care about proper type handling, Gary, because it would make my life easier does not mean my point isn't valid and the topic isn't interesting. A messages board is generally for everyone ... not just where your own interests lie, my friend.

Unless, I sorely hope I'm wrong on this, you're paid by Xara themselves to remove anything negative that could be posted on these boards about their software.

**angelize** · 14 July 2013, 07:36 AM

@humblenations: I found your link on ligatures very interesting. It is still there and does not seem to be deleted. We have a Fonts & Typography forum here at TG where we discussing Typography and font related subjects in general. I've also reposted your link there in a new thread http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...d-what-they-do

Any one who would like to further discuss ligatures or the linked article is welcome to participate in the new thread

**Big Frank** · 14 July 2013, 11:30 AM

Originally Posted by humblenations

Unless, I sorely hope I'm wrong on this, you're paid by Xara themselves to remove anything negative that could be posted on these boards about their software.

that doesn't go on here
xara don't moderate this board for complaints about their software
xara in fact don't moderate this board at all
all mods are unpaid volunteers
usually to keep spammers out and for bad behaviour
but theres none of that

**gwpriester** · 14 July 2013, 12:12 PM

His link was not deleted Frances, it was put in moderation, perhaps because of the link and a new member with under 10 posts or something.

**angelize** · 14 July 2013, 06:13 PM

@ Gary: Ahh that explains a lot.

@ humblenations: Just to clarify, we have automatic spam filters in place that will place posts into moderation if the user is very new and posting links. Most of the time the moderators are fairly quick to sort out any posts that have been caught in error as yours was, but sometimes if your post goes into moderation you may have to wait a bit for one of us to approve it. I do hope that you will continue to participate here at TG. There is a gallery forum where you can post finished artwork, areas for photography, typography, and a lot more!