AAT Support

[Eirik]

As I understand it, Mellel relies on its own code to produce text, and hence is unable to draw benefit from the features provided by Apple Advanced Typography. To which extent is this true? Does Mellel do ligature handling, kerning etc.?

Best regards,
Eirik

[Mart°n]

Mellel uses ligatures (for example the fi-Ligature of the aat-Zapfino font delivered with OS X) if there are some but that’s already the complete support for AAT and TrueType fonts. There is no support for kerning, alternate glyphs, oldstyle-figures and all the other AAT features. Mellel supports most OpenType features very well (alternate Glyphs are currently not supported) so it would be a good idea to use those with Mellel if you could get some.

[nicka]

Mellel supports most OpenType features very well (alternate Glyphs are currently not supported)

Specifically, depending on what the font supports: you can turn on (or off) small caps, old-style/lining figures, fractions, sub- and superscripts, and some ligatures. Basic ligatures and kerning are turned on automatically.
Given all of this, and the lack of support for manual kerning, for many purposes it makes little sense to use Mellel with non-Open Type faces.

[Mart°n]

Mellel supports most OpenType features very well (alternate Glyphs are currently not supported)

Specifically, depending on what the font supports: you can turn on (or off) small caps, old-style/lining figures, fractions, sub- and superscripts, and some ligatures. Basic ligatures and kerning are turned on automatically.

Regarding small caps, only an ALL SMALL CAPS option is available currently which is not very useful at all. The more common MIXED SMALL CAPS style have to be done for each word manually.

Given all of this, and the lack of support for manual kerning, for many purposes it makes little sense to use Mellel with non-Open Type faces.

That’s true. While I really like OpenType fonts and fully understand the Redler’s preference to choose them for a true multilingual word processor, at least kerning for TrueType and PostScript (Type 1) fonts should be implemented so you are able to use them (for printout) with Mellel because there are so many nice looking fonts available in those formats.

[rpcameron]

The OpenType standard builds on TrueType. If specific kerning pairs are defined for a TrueType font, the tables that define them should be readable by applications that interpret OT-specific features as well. Are there any specific instances of kerning pairs not being used in TrueType fonts in Mellel?

Also, although the system-wide Typography panel allows for insertion of glyph alternates in AAT fonts, does anyone know of a non-Adobe program that allows for arbitrary insertion of glyph alternates in OT fonts?

While it is sometimes annoying that Mellel does not implement every OT feature, it is still an accomplishment that their text engine renders OT fonts as well as it does, considering it is a scratch implementation. Furthermore, starting with Tiger (OS X 10.4.x), OS X could natively use OpenType features in fonts, with a few caveats: advanced features that were not reflected in AAT standard did not translate. This means that contextual forms and conjuncts (beyond the standard typography ligatures) are not very usable. This is especially noticed when using Arabic and Devanagari scripts which rely on those features heavily.

[donb]

It's worth keeping in mind that Pop Char shows you all the glyphs (letters) provided by each installed font; if you especially want to insert a form that Mellel does not automatically allow for, a click on the Pop Char icon in the menu bar lets you look through everything the font has, and insert any of the items into your text. This includes all the special ligatures and special letter forms any particular font has. You can keep it open if you need to use any particular item(s) often. I've been using it for around 18 years now, it's one of the best shareware programs around.

Don Broadribb

[nicka]

a click on the Pop Char icon in the menu bar lets you look through everything the font has, and insert any of the items into your text.

Any of the items? Even glyph alternates? Only in Leopard, or in Tiger too?

[donb]

Any of the items? Even glyph alternates? Only in Leopard, or in Tiger too?

Yes to all three questions. You can download a trial copy from:
http://www.ergonis.com/products/popcharx/

I have no connection with the developer or vendor; I've just relied on it for many years. To my mind it's a must-have for any sort of type-setting.

Don Broadribb

[nicka]

Thanks for the reply, Don.

I have downloaded PopChar, and have had a look for the glyph variants, but can't find them... Also there's nothing in the user manual about them.

To clarify, I'm talking about the things you can see in Character Palette under the 'Glyph' view, but which Character Palette will not insert into Mellel (they work fine in TextEdit, though). My previous understanding was that they do work in Mellel under Leopard (I am still using Tiger). I can't see them at all in PopChar. Any thoughts?

[Mart°n]

To clarify, I'm talking about the things you can see in Character Palette under the 'Glyph' view, but which Character Palette will not insert into Mellel (they work fine in TextEdit, though). My previous understanding was that they do work in Mellel under Leopard (I am still using Tiger). I can't see them at all in PopChar. Any thoughts?

The current version of PopChar doesn’t display Glyph variants (at least not in OS X 10.4.11) so you couldn’t insert them into Mellel. Even if they would be displayed, you still would not be able to insert them into a Mellel document as Mellel doesn’t support glyph variants in 10.4.11 (at least not Mellel 2.5).
I’ve also used PopChar for many years and I really like it but it doesn’t help you to workaround a limitation of Mellel in 10.4.

[nicka]

Oh well. Thanks for the clarification.