@CyanCG re. my simplistic OOXML/OT comparison I accept your criticism. Like @Uglyface200, I was under the impression that Graphite2 was being actively developed for MacOS, although I have not looked at it for some time. This blog post by Khaled Hosny regarding LO/XeTeX porting to Harfbuzz (incl. Graphite2) is relevant.
@CyanCG, I feel that Wikipedia quotation requires a “[citation needed]” tag. If you know of evidence supporting the claim I would be interested (and saddened) to know of it. EDIT: A quick test of Graphite support for ligatures under MacOS 10.6.8 / LOv4.0.3.3 using Linux Libertine G shows this appears to be working. Which particular Graphite features are you not seeing?
@CyanCG : Re : Graphite support in Firefox (on Mac). You can get a decent test page here: Miao Unicode: documentation and scroll down a bit. (Assuming you’ve done the “about:config” search “graphite” > “enabled | true” thing, of course.) FWIW.
@oweng thanks for the links. I remember testing small caps and uppercase to small caps with Libertine G, I don’t remember whether I tested anything else. I did not know about Graphite2 being developed for OS X and now I rejoice; it seems that I was misled by this Wikipedia article and it should be updated. @dajare, Graphite indeed works with the test page you linked to in Firefox on my OS X 10.8. As for LibO’s Graphite features on my OS X install, perhaps I have a bug that’s specific to my setup.
I have added a “citation needed” tag to the Wikipedia article statement and a comment in the Talk page.
While it is not specifically mentioned in the original question I thought this thread should note that support for the OpenType locl feature (localized forms) is also now supported (FDO#62154). I imagine this feature will be available in v4.1.0.
According to this bug report OpenType/OTF ligatures are properly supported.
HOWEVER, I have not been able to get them to work at all, despite this functionality being apparently supported in the up-to-date version of LibreOffice I have. So, your mileage may vary.
The questioner specifically excluded ligatures as something he wants. I frequently access stylistic sets, and hate having to use Word to get an alternate g, so +1 for this feature from me.
The solution that works best for me right now is to only make basic typography in LibO, then export the document with Writer2LaTeX 1.2, change a few commands to get small caps, real sup/sub etc. and typeset with XeTeX.
…which doesn’t exactly work for those of us who don’t want to take the time to download and learn a whole programming language for a few aesthetic changes.
I wholeheartedly agree: in the long run, it is very necessary to support all of OpenType. From what I gather, it seems that this would be easier if LibreOffice used Harfbuzz for rendering. This would give LibO a very good edge on MS Office and many other products.
Now, if only the developers could give us some information on how easy/difficult this would be to implement. I’m sure the LibO community would be glad to help.
Certainly. I’m a newbie when it comes to programming, but when I have the time I want to write a detailed “enhancement bug” report, because I want to make sure that those who are responsible for this part of the code base understand how important it is. See this article.
Maybe a workaround could be the Writer2LaTeX extension (http://writer2latex.sourceforge.net/), as it “converts documents into LaTeX 2e format for high quality typesetting”.
But it is cumbersome to use, as you have to install two packages on your system (LibreOffice and LaTeX).
Using Debian Lenny, OpenType fonts features (contextual alternates an ligatures) work.
It is a revolution. Simply put, LibreOffice suddenly became modern.
- What marks this milestone: the
version 4? - What on systems other than Debian?
4.1 brings this to OS X with Core Text and to Linux with Pango/Harfbuzz.
…and windows XP ??? Left in the cold because it is old???
I have no idea about Windows XP specifically. What I do know is that, on Windows, the modern and “correct” way to implement OpenType is with Windows Presentation Foundation, which is a .NET technology. An alternate way of implementing OpenType is possible, but I am not aware of many applications that implement advanced OpenType features on Windows besides Adobe’s suite.
Well, there’s MS Office 2010 and 2013. And all browsers. And pretty much any application on a Mac, including LibreOffice.