Hello, in a discussion yesterday, I was talking about stylistic set feature code automation and the use of custom suffixes. Some people prefer using custom suffixes in order to make it clear what the alternates actually do, but that breaks automatic feature code generation.
Would it be thinkable to have a text field/selector in the stylistic set feature window where a custom suffix can be entered? That way, even if my glyphs are named .roundAlt, after noting that suffix in my ss01 feature, the feature code can still be generated automatically.
That would be a great feature on collaborative projects, where two things are important:
intentions of other collaborators should be clear (what are the alternates for)
automatically generating features for ease of use and testing
Specifying which suffixes belong to which feature would also help with glyphs that are replaced in several features. Such features can’t be automated at the moment.
We tend to put each alternate in its own cvXX feature, e.g. cv01 for a, cv02 for g, …, but then the same glyphs should be grouped in a ssXX as well, e.g. single-storey a and g together in stylistic set 1.
More flexibility with glyph suffixes would help in this regard.
I agree. I have had a few projects where the same glyph was to be included in multiple stylistic sets. Automatic feature code generation wasn’t possible. Defining a suffix (or, ideally, multiple) that are to be included in a stylistic set would make this much more manageable.