[XeTeX] Fine tune selecting alternate glyphs

[Janusz S. Bień]

On Tue, Feb 09 2010 at  6:24 CET, hospes.primus at verizon.net writes:

[...]

> XeTeX comes with that nifty utility that allows one to identify the OT
> or AAT features that exist in a font.  It would be very helpful if
> there were a similar utility that would identify which characters have
> stylistic alternates.  Running such a utility on a font would produce
> a list like this:
>    a - 5 variants, b - 1 variant, e - 4 variants, g - 6 variants, etc.
>
> One could then construct a test document to see which alternates are
> accessed with which numbers.  This is an important issue because some
> font makers don't provide exact information about what characters have
> alternate glyphs, even if they tell you that the font does contain
> stylistic alternates.  (I guess they assume everyone uses an
> application like InDesign or Quark that comes with a palette to show
> the alternates.)  Without this information XeTeX users can't access
> the variants since they have to be called numerically.  Anybody want
> to write something like this?  (I would do it but I don't have the
> programming skills.).

I would also like very such a tool. Do I understand correctly there is
still none?

Best regards

Janusz

-- 
                           ,   
Prof. dr hab. Janusz S. Bien -  Uniwersytet Warszawski (Katedra Lingwistyki Formalnej)
Prof. Janusz S. Bien - University of Warsaw (Formal Linguistics Department)
jsbien at uw.edu.pl, jsbien at mimuw.edu.pl, http://fleksem.klf.uw.edu.pl/~jsbien/