Oldstyle figures

Glyphs
1

Glyphs uses .osf as the suffix to denote oldstyle figures. But unicode index numbers are assigned to “oldstyle” (ie. zerooldstyle is assigned unicode F730 through nineoldstyle assigned unicode F739). Is it possible to alter Glyphs to recognize the oldstyle suffix to denote oldstyle figures?

2

The unicode values are in the private use area. They where used to encode old style figures when opentype features where not supported. You shouldn’t use them in new fonts. So you are fine with the .osf suffix.

3

Thanks George

4

Does this also hold true for woff exports?
I’m testing a woff export at the moment, and the oldstyle figures appear as lining. Am I right in thinking that the Browser would rely on Unicode values to display oldstyle figures?

5

Yes.

Two ways to handle this:

  • Simply with OT features since most browsers support onum, only Safari does not.
  • Have a second WOFF only containing oldstyle figures, and CSS code that apply that font to figures where intended.
6

Thanks for the quick reply, mekkablue. Ideally I’d like to rely on Opentype features. I’m not too concerned about older browsers. If I understand you correctly, .osf is the way to go.

7

Safari is not an old browser, one of the most used browser (mac + iOS).

edit: I check and the page you link to is wrong. The number features are supported by Safari 10 (on macOS 10.12).