https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106513
--- Comment #6 from MartinPC <[email protected]> --- (In reply to Luke from comment #2) > This feature would be especially nice because it is so far only available to > a limited as a Graphite smartfont feature for Linux Libertine - but not for > any other fonts. In Scribus, InDesign etc. optical margin alignment appears > to be implemented in the software. So it is unlikely that other fonts will > ever have such a feature implemented only for LibreOffice. > > "hanging punctuation" is another term that describes more or less the same > feature. Searching for this in LiberOffice Help indicates that the feature > seems to be already available for Asian typography (but apparently limited > to periods and commas). This makes me hope that the feature could relatively > easily be implemented for Latin script and punctuation signs like hyphens. > Bud I must admit I have now knowledge in software development whatsoever. I'm only an amateur fan of nice typography with no formal training in the subject, but my understanding is that "optical alignment" is a sort of "hanging punctuation" LITE. I think full-fledged hanging punctuation pushes shorter-height, smaller-width punctuation marks like single quotation marks, double quotation marks, commas, and the like — marks with lighter visual impact — more or less all of the way out into the margins, so that a paragraph's regular characters all seem to line up straight. In "optical alignment," these and other punctuation marks are just pushed out into the margins a LITTLE, so that regular characters don't look jarringly out of line when they're preceded or followed by a light-weight punctuation mark. (I'm guessing that some of the "heavier-weight" punctuation marks are handled the "optical alignment" way even under bona-fide hanging punctuation: shoving a full-length em-dash all of the way out into the margin would be too visually disruptive.) Regardless of the approach used, the goal is to trick the mind into finding the left and right sides pleasingly aligned. I have been using "hanging punctuation" in LibreOffice Writer by enabling the option in the bundled Linux Libertine G (Graphite) font and have three useful observations about it: (1) the published parameters for the switch are reversed, i.e., you have to turn hanging punctuation OFF for it to actually be ON, and vice versa; (2) it's actually dramatically more akin to minimal "optical alignment" than to true "hanging punctuation"; and (3) I've been encountering spacing and justification problems and I'm too technically ignorant to know whether to ascribe them to the font itself, or to LibreOffice's implementation of Graphite, or to LibreOffice's implementation of the HarfBuzz text-shaping engine. It's a shame, really, because it's a nice-looking font. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.
