"Small caps" vs. "All small caps"

[donb]

Of course, you can set an F key for small caps in one of the very few fonts which provide for genuine small caps, e.g. Minion Pro, Warnock Pro, and a tiny handful of others.

When you want a small caps word that starts with a normal Cap, you need only type the normal Cap, then press the small-caps-F key for the following letters, and then press F1 when you are done with typing small caps. If you are too lazy for that, then I guess there is no hope,

Is it really worth requiring that Mellel's code be rewritten to automatically make the first letter of a small caps word be in normal caps form? That's a high price to pay for not wanting to press the F1 key when you are done with typing small caps for a word.

Don Broadribb

[transalpin]

When you want a small caps word that starts with a normal Cap, you need only type the normal Cap, then press the small-caps-F key for the following letters, and then press F1 when you are done with typing small caps.

a) This is not proper markup, and if someone has to substitute small caps for, say, italics in a 300+ pages document, but he doesn’t want to do it manually, you can’t call him “lazy”.
b) You forget that small caps are often used for authors, and it is not possible to assign a style variant for only part of the name when importing bibliography data from bookends.
c) Why should Mellel’s perception of OpenType small caps differ from fake small caps in that respect? The feature is broken, that’s indisputable.

On the other hand, is it really worth arguing over something that the Redlers obviously don’t care about?

[nicka]

Is it really worth requiring that Mellel's code be rewritten to automatically make the first letter of a small caps word be in normal caps form?

Yes.

(Requesting and hoping, though, rather than requiring.)

[defect]

On the other hand, is it really worth arguing over something that the Redlers obviously don’t care about?

Whether this is true or not: it is worth arguing anyway.

You just named those reasons that would most support the feature in my opinion:

1. In academic writings it is common that small caps are used in bibliographies. Because of the great amount of literature some academic writers need to include, it is no good option to work without programs like BookEnds. And because an automatically included bibliography needs to be formatted automatically if it is to be a good option, there needs to be a feature to do this. It is especially one kind of consumers that Mellel is up to that would use this feature: Academic writers who make use of OpenType to improve the typographical look of their papers.

2. I can't see why the OpenType-Option should work otherwise than the fake small caps-Option, too. It would increase the consistency of the program to apply an option for small caps, and that is surely something worth caring about. The all small caps option is very useful and I don't think it should be replaced, but the small caps are also needed.

It isn't so much that fake caps are so ugly that they can't be used or something like that. I don't really think they are necessary always ugly.
But... If there is a possibility to reach (much) better results via OpenType, than this possibility should be usable in the same easy way than the fake caps. Mellel is up to provide the best writing processor for scholars, and especially for these it would make a difference whether or not Mellel will get this feature. At the moment the bibliographies in all my papers need to be reformatted at the end just because there is no OpenType option to get the small caps as needed automatically.

[nicka]

one of the very few fonts which provide for genuine small caps, e.g. Minion Pro, Warnock Pro, and a tiny handful of others

No disrespect intended, but I think this information is a bit out of date. Quite a few of the font companies, not just Adobe (which provides Minion and Warnock) are now issuing their fonts in OpenType versions with such necessary features as small caps and lowercase numerals. So, for example, you can get useful text faces like Albertina, Apollo, Bell, Bembo, Dante, Monotype 'Garamond', Haarlemmer etc. etc. from Monotype; Alcuin, Aldus, Sabon etc. from Linotype, all in OpenType forms with small caps and all bar Alcuin with text numerals.

You can see this information easily using the Linotype font store browser in Font Explorer X (freeware): there are icons that represent the features of each font such as whether it includes small caps and text figures.

(Standard disclaimer: I have nothing to do with any of these foundries.)

[Reiner]

At the moment the bibliographies in all my papers need to be reformatted at the end just because there is no OpenType option to get the small caps as needed automatically.

There is already a way to get automatically formated Bibliographies using real open type all small caps. (But of course until only all small caps but not small caps are supported by Mellel, only all small caps are working.)

Second restriction: This is only possible for bibliographies but not for in-text-citations.

Format the author-/editor-fields you want as underlined within your used Bookends format. Than set underlines to be replaced by the style (variation) you use for small caps within Mellel's Preferences > Bibliography.

best regards

[defect]

There is already a way to get automatically formated Bibliographies using real open type all small caps. (But of course until only all small caps but not small caps are supported by Mellel, only all small caps are working.)
[...]

That's what I'm doing at the moment.
... And when the paper is finished, I add a different style to the first letter of each name in the bibliography to get the result of (not-all) small caps. Of course I get the design I need to have but it's very uncomfortable, especially for large bibliographies. I would like this to function automatically just like it is automatically done when using fake small caps.

[Boban]

I've never had a single publisher ask for small caps in a bibliography (I'm in Humanities) – is this common in some disciplines?

B.

[matthias]

I also think that it is not so much the laziness of Mellel users, but rather the formatting needs of academic writers, a target group Mellel is specifically aiming at, that underlies the request for better small caps implementation (see this thread http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php?t=1292 for a recent discussion of that topic).

As others have already pointed out, small caps are often required for author names. When implementing small caps as requested by so many here, Mellel's should also be enhanced with regard to the possibility to replace formatting of references handed over by Bookends. As Reiner pointed out this is currently restricted to references in the bibliography list, but can not be applies to citations. In academic legal writing and in the humanities, however, it is often required to have author names in citations set in small caps as well. So having a feature to replace formatting of citations is closely connected to the "proper" implementation of small caps.

Matthias

[TLS]

I've never had a single publisher ask for small caps in a bibliography (I'm in Humanities) – is this common in some disciplines?

It is very common in the Humanities in Continental Europe, at least in France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia; I am not sure about elsewhere, but imagine this is the case. I have had papers returned to me because I did not do this (out of ignorance at the time).