[10 new] Add old-style/lining/text figure numerals (alternate glyphs)

[octoploid]

The font currently lacks old-style/text figure numerals. These are Latin numeral digits (0123456789) with ascenders and descenders that are often used in running text:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_figures

This font needs text figures to be useful professionally. Please add them.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

There is not a separate codepoint in the Unicode specification for oldstyle numerals, so these would need to be added by the Opentype Alternate Glyph methods. In the following video, Bruno Maag talks about the addition of numeric digit alternatives:

  http://ubuntudevelopers.blip.tv/file/3618693/ (offset ~40:40)

Using the 'ttx' TTF to XML debugging tool, I discovered that there are already various '{one,two,three,...}.alt' glyphs provided and these are additionally mapped into the private-use area:

  0x0030–0x0039 fixed width digits
  0xf800–0xf809 variable width digits
  0xf80a–0xf813 superscript digits
  0xf814–0xf81d subscript digits

After a couple of hours of messing about, I still haven't managed to get these to rendering using the proper alternate methods—not all applications support the Opentype extension tables, but in theory XeTeX does. I haven't got the alternate mechanism working; but see the attached '.tex' and '.pdf' for the currently found alternate digit glyphs:

[Georg Duffner (mcduff)]

Super- and subscript numerals can be selected with \textsubscript and \textsuperscript commands. The »Alternate« tag as you tried it is only available if there are stylistic alternates defined which aren’t in this font (and it wouldn’t make much sense in this case, as opentype features are already defined for them with meaningful names). You can select them as well by calling them with \addfontfeatures{RawFeature=+subs}, for example. See them in the attached files.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

The bug report says the font lacks text figure numerals.

The attached PDF shows that the font includes superscript, subscript, numerator, and denominator numerals.

Unfortunately, I can't tell whether the bug is actually fixed. What are the steps we could perform to tell whether the characters are present and useful?

[Kevin Godby (godbyk)]

This bug hasn't been fixed yet.

The original bug report was asking about text figures and lining figures. I've attached a PDF demonstrating the difference between these in the Linux Libertine font. The Ubuntu font is missing text figures. The Ubuntu font provides lining figures by default.

Specifically, the Ubuntu font needs to have text (old-style) figures added to it as well as the associated 'onum' OpenType feature. In addition an 'lnum' OpenType feature should be added so the lining figures can be addressed as such.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Thanks Kevin. I highly doubt the assertion that "This font needs text figures to be useful professionally", but this is a valid feature request.