Question: How to Add Alternate Character Selection for Adobe Software

[thomasweakley]

Adobe Creative Suite has a feature with .otf type files that shows a menu of alternate characters on hover of a selected character (see screenshot above). I have been trying for weeks to figure out how to achieve this with the font I've created in FontForge to no avail. I've tried setting the variant selectors and alternate subs but I still can't get the hover menu of alternate chars to work (see screen shots below). I'm sure there is a simple process for this but I just haven't found it. What am I missing?

Thanks for you time!

[mnmustafa]

Hi, I am a newbie... so my solution might work or might not.

I was facing such issue while generating alternative options for numbers (in arabic). For days, I couldn't figure out what am I missing. However, I was using lookups to do this task. The solution to this was adding: "latn{dflt}" in the metadata of the lookup (under script).

So maybe you need to create the aalt lookup for it first and then make sure latn{dflt} is there in the lookup's script.

If you figure out the other way around to solve this, then please do share.

PS: I am using CS6

[totake0224]

Hi, I am also a newbie, but I have two advice.
1, Your way of setting variant selector is not correct.
2,Adobe's Alternate variant selection is different from fontforge variant selector.
below is explanation.
1,When variant selector setting . it needs variant character's glyph info panel. but your image shows you set base character's glyph info panel. solution is , open variant character's glyph info panel and set base character code to it's Variant selector table.

2,Adobe's Alternate variant selection is using aalt table.so you have to make look up table 'aalt' and set it's subtable to base character name and variant character name. explaining this is little troublesome.
If some one want to know this. I will
explain it. ( attached image is sample aalt table. I'm sorry I don't know howto change fontforge language.)
Bye.