Ligatures and Glyphs with new designer X Update

[RKissane]

I have been playing around with the Ligatures and Glyphs feature in the new March update for Designer X.

Well it works but I have seen some draw backs to the way it is implemented. Maybe I should say as the way I understand it. What I mean is that when using the stylized sets you have no way of knowing what is in each set. So it is hit or miss if you can get the effect you want. When using a font viewer you can look at all the glyphs and characters but I have not been able to tell which one would be in which stylized set that Xara is using. Xara does not provide a viewer and the help file really does not have much information, because of this, i think this feature will take some work to use.

One of the new features of the update is that you can copy a glyph from a font viewer and past it into Xara as unformatted text and it will come in as a text object, not as bitmap like in the previous versions of Xara.

I have not been able to find how to type in the Unicode for a character or glyph and have Xara automatically place the proper text object in the document. I have looked for this in help and done a search to no avail. If anybody knows how to do this or if it possible please let me know?

Be interested in hearing others thoughts and experience with this new feature.

Ray

[mwenz]

Hi Ray,

Yes, one the one hand the added OT features are a bit of a let down. But on the other hand, as long as improvements are made, they are a great step forward.

I have never tried typing Unicode values in XDP.

[gwpriester]

Ray - I agree with Mike that this added support is a step forward.

But since the majority of us are not trained typographers we need more visual support when selecting ligatures. Having a dedicated floating menu that shows all available ligatures for a selected font, and breaking this into categories, with the ability to add with a click and one that remains open until closed must be the next step.

[mwenz]

To be more clear, I don't need anything visual for ligatures. Either the font being used has them or doesn't. However, disabling one or both options if the font doesn't have them seems prudent.

I do care very much that stylistic sets have a visual indicator for either a sample of text if no character is selected or the particular character(s) if selected.

[gwpriester]

Well, in that case Mike, I disagree. Using ligatures consistently for the text of an entire book or document for example makes sense. But there are times when let's say for doing chapter titles or first line emphasis or other times when seeing the available options would help me very much. And any rate, having the option to view or not view the available ligatures and glyphs is better than no option.

[mwenz]

A glyphs panel could/would/should show all available glyphs, including ligs. What I don't think is necessary would be that they (ligs) are displayed in the UI for the turning on/off of them.

I am unclear as to how displaying ligs where they get turned on/off would be useful. Most fonts use two standard ligatures if they have them at all. Some fonts have a few standard ligatures. But they are not many codepoints for standard ligs. There are more discretionary lig codepoints but even so there aren't that many.

So how would having them iterated in the UI where we turn them on really aid in setting a headline? Would you edit a headline just to use ligs?

[gwpriester]

To be honest I have not given it a log of thought and most headlines would not use ligatures for display type unless it was to provide a vintage look to the typography.

But there are times when you might want to use certain ligatures but not all and I could see the use of being able to say well this ligature could work well here.

At any rate something more visual than an all or nothing on/off approach.

[mwenz]

Yep, the glyph panel approach would work fine for ligs and somewhat stylistic alternates. I think it would be the "easiest" to incorporate, as well as provide functionality beyond just the OT features we now have.

For instance, I have to switch out my keyboard profile for International English and, once in a blue moon, another language altogether to key-in accented characters. But for some work, just copy/paste of a handful of characters from something like Bablemap is all that is needed and isn't worth the time for a keyboard swap. An integrated glyphs panel would make this faster and easier.

The same can hold true for many font's stylistic sets. Though I do have some fonts that the glyph panel in AI will not view the entire character in a meaningful way and it is still a shot in the dark.

Which is why how Corel implemented access to alternates, etc., is a perfect solution for a drawing application.

[ernie-f]

I have not been able to find how to type in the Unicode for a character or glyph and have Xara automatically place the proper text object in the document. I have looked for this in help and done a search to no avail. If anybody knows how to do this or if it possible please let me know?

Be interested in hearing others thoughts and experience with this new feature.

Ray

Hi Ray,

there are more methods to set unicode characters in Windows.

The easiest is the Windows CharMap via copy and paste.



An other method is the Alt + numpad ASCI code.

The unicode characters, who are not supported in ASCI are coded in hexadecimal and will be set as follow:

1. Press and hold down the Alt key.
2. Press the + (plus) key on the numeric keypad.
3. Type the hexidecimal unicode value.
4. Release the Alt key.

If this method didn't work for you, then you must setup the Registry under HKEY_Current_User/Control Panel/Input Method, set EnableHexNumpad to "1". If you have to add it, set the type to be REG_SZ.



I made a comparism with the OT ligatures functionality in XDP, Indesign, Serif PagePlus X9 and Affinity Designer.



I think that Xara have done the first step to support OT feauters. For the ligatures they done a good job. What I wish are thinks like OTF numbers variants and a preview what characters are implented in each font, with the possibility to insert them.

[RKissane]

Ernie,

I had figured out that the copy and paste worked, I used a font viewer to paste from.

I think you may have posted the Alt + Asci code method before but in searching the site I could not find it, even using Google. I will give this a try.

Based on your screen shot it looks like everybody is displaying the ligatures in a similar manner. So if Xara can incorporate a Glyph viewer we would really be moving in the right direction.

I wish someone from Xara would chime in here about how they set up the stylized sets and maybe how they envisioned them being used without a viewer.

Thanks
Ray