Does Glyphs 2 Mini support alternates?

Glyphs
1

The Glyphs Mini handbook states (pg 91.):

“aalt All Alternatives Glyphs automatically builds the aalt feature based on all features that substitute glyphs.”

But, I’ve read elsewhere in the forum that Glyphs Mini does NOT support alternates. I have tried creating alternates (using .alt), but they don’t work (at least, not in Illustrator). So, is the handbook wrong, or am I implementing the feature incorrectly?

Thanks,
Steve

2

There are many different kinds of alternates, some are supported by Mini, and others aren’t. The aalt feature is something else entirely, and you can just forget about this for now. The “.alt” suffix is not recognised by Glyphs, so it is expected that it doesn’t do anything.

What kind of alternate do you want to use? (e.g. small caps, swashes, oldstyle numerals, or just different shapes for whatever reason…)

3

I’m new to Glyphs (Mini) and still experimenting, so it’s not so much a question of what I need it to do as trying to understand what I can and can’t do.

I assume, from what you’ve said, that it doesn’t recognise old style or tabular figures?

4

For old style figures, you use .osf suffix (one.osf for example). I am not sure which is recognised by Mini. Here is a list that you can use in the full version. I assume there are more though. Do try them in Mini!
.osf: Oldstyle proportional numerals
.tosf: Oldstyle tabular
.lf: lining proportional numerals
.tf: tabular figures (you only need either lf or tf as alternates. Glyphs will figure out which one is the default)
.sc: small caps
.sups: superiors
.subs: subscripts
.ss01: Stylistic set 1
.swsh: swashes
.liga: If you want this ligature to be active by default (T_h.liga for example. T_h without .liga will be discretionary ligature, which is inactive by default)

1 Like
5

Thanks!

I’ve tried both .lf and .tf and neither seem to work, but I’ll try .osf and .tosf.

6

I saw the Mini handbook now. Looks like you can only use .sc out of above list.

7

No, that is a mistake in the handbook. The only substitution features supported are the ones listed on the Glyphs Mini page:

Automatic OpenType feature generation for localized forms, fractions, ordinals, discretionary and standard ligatures