G
OpenType Font Format
What is OpenType?
OpenType is a new font format cre-
ated jointly by ADOBE SYSTEMS and MI-
CROSOFT that can be viewed as a superset
of TrueType and PostScript, with added
capabilities for advanced typography. It
is based on Unicode, which gives it a
model to support any of the world’s
languages.
OpenType fonts may include an ex-
panded character set and layout features
to provide richer linguistic support and
advanced typographic control.
Technically, a cross-platform Open-
Type font is similar to a Windows-style
TrueType font, with additional tables.
An OpenType font with PostScript-style
outlines has an “.otf” extension and
uses a different table for the outline
data than one with TrueType outlines.
An OpenType font with TrueType out-
lines normally has a “.ttf” extension.
Note that using OpenType does not
mean one has to abandon one’s existing
fonts. OpenType fonts can co-exist with
Type 1 and TrueType fonts on a com-
puter.
Advantages of Open Type
❙ Cross-platform fonts! Use the same
font file on Mac or Windows as easily
as you move document files back &
forth. Any OpenType font uses a single
font file for all of its outline, metric,
and bitmap data, making file manage-
ment simpler. In addition, the same font
file works on Macintosh and Windows
computers (Picture 1). As a result, Open-
Type lets you move font files back and
forth between platforms with noticeable
improvement in cross-platform portabili-
ty for any documents that use type.
❙ Better Language Support
Based on Unicode, an international two-
byte character encoding that covers vir-
tually all of the world’s languages,
OpenType fonts can make multilingual
typography easier by including multiple
language character sets in one font.
❙ Exciting typographic capabilities via
OpenType features: arbitrary ligatures,
real (not scaled) small caps, old-style fig-
ures, arbitrary fractions, alternates and
many more, all in a single font.
❙ “Wide” fonts: OpenType fonts may
have up to 64K glyphs, instead of being
limited to 256 encoded glyphs (as with
today’s Type 1 fonts). With a typical
Western PostScript fonts you are forcing
to install and manage two or more style-
related fonts in order to access “expert
set” characters. OpenType significantly
simplifies font management and the
publishing workflow by ensuring that all
of the required glyphs for a document
are contained in one cross-platform font
file throughout the workflow.
❙ the “.otf” flavour of OpenType fonts
uses Adobe’s “Compact Font Format”
(CFF, or Type 2) to represent the font
outlines. As a result, the individual fonts
are only 50-200K in size, despite their
large character sets (some have over
1,000 glyphs).
Additional Software Requirements
(ATM, OSes, applications)
Just like any other kind of font, ap-
plications must have a means of access-
ing OpenType fonts. The OpenType
fonts are added to the kinds of fonts
supported at the system level, and any
program that gets its font support by
standard system calls can use OpenType
fonts.
A few applications deal with fonts
more directly, bypassing some of the
standard system functions, in which
case the system-level support may not be
necessary. Some Adobe applications
work this way and you can install
OpenType fonts for that program’s use
in the application’s private “fonts” fold-
er--regardless of OS and ATM versions.
This is true with InDesign (all versions),
Photoshop 5.5 and higher, and Imag-
eReady 2.0 and higher.
However, it is likely that you will
want to use these fonts in multiple ap-
plications.
Requirements for this depend on
your operating system.
❙ Windows 95, 98, or NT4: ATM 4.1
Light or Deluxe;
❙ Windows 2000: ATM not required;
❙ Mac OS 8.1 through OS 9: ATM 4.6
Light or Deluxe Application.
Picture 1. Macintosh PostScript Type 1 Font;
Windows PostScript Type 1 Font; OpenType Font
Macintosh & Windows;
Compatibility

General:
If you are using an OpenType-savvy
ATM, or an OS such as Windows 2000,
which has native OpenType support,
OpenType fonts should work just as
well as Type 1 fonts with almost all ex-
isting applications. Additionally, to ac- Picture 3. Small Caps feature from Character
palette in InDesign.
cess automatic features of the fonts
requires an OpenType-savvy application.
Currently, Adobe InDesign is the only Цифров печат
such application.

Adobe InDesign™ and OpenType Ц



InDesign™, Adobe’s flagship page
layout program, was the first Adobe ap-
plication to provide advanced OpenType
feature support. Other Adobe applica-
tions are expected to follow suit in the
future. With InDesign and other Open-
Type-savvy applications, you can turn
on OpenType layout features that auto-
matically substitute alternate glyphs, the
ligatures, and old-style figures in an
OpenType Pro font. In addition, all
glyphs in an OpenType font can be ac-
cessed in InDesign, whether or not a
layout feature through the Character
palette in InDesign covers them, and
any alternate glyphs in OpenType fonts
may be selected manually via the Insert
Character palette (Picture 2).
OpenType feature support
Central to a discussion of OpenType
feature support lies the distinction be-
tween characters and glyphs. Characters
are the code points assigned by the Uni-
code standard, which represent the
smallest semantic units of language,
such as letters. Glyphs are the specific
forms that those characters can take.
One character may correspond to several
glyphs; the lowercase “a” character can
be represented by multiple glyphs in an
OpenType font >> a cap “A” and a
small cap “
” are all the same character,
but they are three separate glyphs. One
glyph can also represent multiple charac-
ters, as in the case of the “ffi” ligature,
which corresponds to a sequence of
three characters: f, f and i.
OpenType layout features can be
used to position or substitute glyphs.
For any character, there is a default
Pictures 3–1, 2. InDesign automatically uses the
small caps designed as part of the font, if
available and changes the case of selected text.
ЦИФРОВ ПЕЧАТ
Picture 3–3. Mathematical scaled caps substitute
Picture 2. Adobe InDesign lets you select and
insert any alternate glyph of an OpenType font the case of selected text if not exist true small
using the Insert Character palette. caps integrated in OpenType font.
tioning, or substitute a different glyph. When you use the standard feature
To access alternate glyphs in an Open- “Small caps” to the text via the Charac-
Type Pro font, an application provides a ter palette in InDesign it would substi-
user interface that allows end users to tute the small caps for the usual
apply OpenType layout features to text. lowercases but this substitution is not
Applications that don’t support Unicode valid for the caps. There is another fea-
or advanced OpenType layout features ture “Caps to Small Caps” for both Lat-
can still access the basic glyph sets of in and Cyrillic support (Picture 4). To
OpenType Pro fonts, which are analo- use this feature in InDesign you need
gous to the glyph sets in today’s Post- the Plug-In-module “Apply OpenType…”
Script Type 1 fonts.
The “all alternates” feature is sup-
ported via the “Insert Character” func-
tion, with alternates available in a flyout
from the initial character within the In-
sert Character palette (Picture 2).
All automatic ligatures in an Open
Type font are on by default (Picture 3).
“Small caps” feature is available by
default in the Character palette in InDe-
sign (Picture 3). Applying the feature to
the text would substitute the small caps
glyphs for the usual lowercases glyphs.
Note: Original designed small caps ТИПОГРАФИЯ
must be integrated in the OpenType
font styles. HermesSOFT has also devel-
oped original designed small caps for
both Cyrillic and Latin support. Origi-


glyph and positioning behaviour. The
application of layout features to one or
more characters may change the posi-
 
nal designed small caps (Picture 3-2) Picture 4. Small caps that are included as part of
compared with mathematical scaled caps the OpenType style change the case of selected
(Picture 3-3). text.
from the Type menu (Picture 5). The se-
lected caps change in small caps
(Picture 4).
“Old Style” feature is available by de-
fault in the Character palette in InDe-
sign (Picture 6). InDesign automatically
uses the oldstyle figures, if available in
an OpenType font and as result the se-
lected numerals change in old styles.
“Cyrillic vowel letters with accents”
– OpenType feature developed from
HERMESSOFT that add unique typographic
capability in OpenType Pro fonts and is
very useful for the high-end typography
in Bulgarian language. To access this
feature you need the Plug-In-module
“Apply OpenType…” (Picture 5).
Note: The Cyrillic letters with accents
must be integrated in the OpenType
font styles. InDesign automatically uses
the definition for this feature in an
OpenType font and as result the select-
ed vowel letter changes in appropriate
letter with accent (Picture 7).
OpenType “Pro” fonts
Some HERMESSOFT font packages are
available in OpenType. We are focused
on the wide OpenType fonts that we are
calling “Pro” fonts. These are OpenType
fonts with extended language support.
Because of the limitations of previ-
ous font technologies, support for expert
character sets and multiple languages re-
quired separate font files. OpenType
fonts provide far more typographic capa-
bilities by combining base character sets,
expert sets, and extensive additional
glyphs into one file.
All HERMESSOFT Pro fonts include
the standard range of Latin characters
used in the Western world, and several
international characters including the
symbols for cent , dollar , euro €, co-
lon ₡, florin ƒ, franc ₣, lira ₤, sterling
£, yen ¥, currency ¤, peseta ₧, and ru-
piah . OpenType Pro fonts from
HERMESSOFT add a full range of accented
characters to support Central and East-
ern European languages, Baltic languag-
es, plus the Slavonic languages and
Turkish. Many of the Pro fonts but not
all also contain Greek character exten-
sions, or true small caps, old styles and
other in the same font (Picture 8 – Full
set of supported characters in OpenType
font HS GaramondPro).
Note: OpenType fonts may have a
0123456789

Picture 5. The function “Apply OpenType Picture 6. The selected numerals change in old
Features...” from menu Type in InDesign. styles that are included in any OpenType style.
single code page, and they will just In Mac OS 8 and OS 9, the support
function like a typical Western or Cyril- for “.otf” fonts via ATM 4.6 is at the
lic or Central European PostScript fonts same level as in MS Windows 95/98. An
with almost all existing applications. OpenType Pro font in this environment,
in a non-OpenType-savvy app, will just
Language support with OpenType function like a regular Type 1 font. Mac
OS 8.5 and higher have a new frame-
Under Windows NT 4 and Windows work for Unicode support, called Apple
2000 Professional, you can simply switch Type Services for Unicode Imaging (AT-
keyboard/language settings, and access SUI), but at this time there are no 3rd-
the appropriate characters of your wide party applications we know supporting
OpenType fonts in many Windows ap- ATSUI, and Apple has made no public
plications (for NT 4, you need ATM 4.1 announcements regarding support for
or better). Additionally, the NT and OpenType in an ATSUI framework.
Windows 2000 Professional character
map accessory is Unicode-aware, and al-
lows you to directly access any glyph
that is encoded in the font. To make it
easier to use OpenType fonts with appli-
cations that support Unicode but not
формата
OpenType features, all the glyphs have a
Unicode and will show up in the Win-
dows NT/2000 Charmap, allowing di-
rect copy/paste insertion.
Under Windows 95/98 you can
switch language settings to get at the
different language sections of a wide
TrueType font, but ATM 4.1 does not
support this functionality for “.otf”
OpenType fonts. These operating sys-
tems do not fully support Unicode, and
the Charmap utility will only show a
single-byte encoding from an OpenType
font. Essentially, an OpenType Pro font
in this environment, in a non-OpenTy-
формата
pe-savvy app, will just function like a Picture 7. The selected Cyrillic vowel letter
regular Type 1 font. changes with the appropriate vowel with accent.
Adobe InDesign’s Unicode
and language support
The language support in ADOBE
InDesighn is independent of the OS.
InDesign uses fonts more directly, by-
passing some of the standard system
functions, in which case the ATM and
system-level support may not be neces-
sary.
Import of Unicode text
Both Windows and Mac InDesign
support import of Unicode text files,
and Windows Word files containing
Unicode. This makes it possible to im-
port a file with (for example) Roma-
nian, Russian and Greek text into
InDesign, even if editing and direct in-
put in these languages is difficult within
InDesign. InDesign’s Insert Character
function allows access to any glyph in
the font, like the Windows Charmap ac-
cessory.
Keyboard input
❙ Under Windows NT 4 and Windows
2000 Professional, InDesign supports di-
rect input of Unicode text in different
languages with your wide OpenType
fonts. You need to activate only the ap-
propriate keyboard driver.
❙ Under Windows 95/98, InDesign sup-
ports direct input of Unicode text in
different languages with your wide
OpenType fonts, but OpenType fonts
activated with ATM 4.1 on Windows 98
(only) do not appear in the InDesign
font menus. This is an InDesign bug.
Workaround: copy the fonts to the In-
Design fonts folder of the
://.../Adobe/InDesign/Fonts.
This bug only occurs on Window 98,
no problems on Windows NT 4 or
Windows 2000.
You will need to activate only the appro-
priate keyboard driver.
❙ In Mac OS 8 and OS 9 environments,
InDesign supports direct input of text
only in a single-byte encoding from an
OpenType font. Direct input in differ-
ent languages within InDesign is possi-
ble only with single code pages Open
Type fonts. You will need to select the
font in the appropriate code page -
CYR, TUR, and CE etc. and to install
the appropriate System Language Script
for Mac OS.
For more information on the soft-
ware requirements for OpenType sup-
port, please refer to the WEB sites of
the respective companies.
– Elena Neytcheva
POLYGRAFIA Magazine, issue 5/2000

Picture 8 - Full set of supported characters in

OpenType font HS GaramondPro.
*The characters in red are original designed
small caps (not scaled) for Western and Cyrillic
support and old-style figures, and are accessed
only in the Open Type font.
*The characters in raster are the Cyrillic vowel
letters with accents that are necessary for the
high-end typesetting in Bulgarian language.

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