David wrote up a great post the other day about how to use Nested Styles with a non-OpenType font so that any numbers in the text use a different typeface automatically — an expert set of Small Caps that’s part of the same typeface family. Toward the end of the post he said, “Now, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t also add that it may just be time to upgrade your fonts to OpenType versions, which may have expert or SC fonts built in. That’s so much easier to deal with!”
So true; but it reminded me that for some unlucky people, OpenType Small Caps can turn nasty, at the most inopportune times.
The Silent Substitution
At least once every couple months I get an e-mail from a client asking if I know why they’re having trouble printing certain characters in their InDesign documents. Things always look fine on-screen, and maybe they print out fine on their local printer or in a PDF, or not (the symptoms vary); but at some point — usually when money is on the line, like at the printer’s — certain characters simply don’t appear in the printout, there’s just white space or gibberish where glyphs should be.
It’s perplexing to me that the issue often boils down to the Small Caps substitution that OpenType typefaces (ones with built-in Small Caps glyphs) carry out behind the scenes, automatically.
If you select some text set in an OpenType face that has the special Small Caps glyphs — as most body text faces do — and turn on Small Caps from the Control panel or as part of the Paragraph or Character style…
… instead of scaling the characters down (per your Preferences settings) as it would for a Type 1 or TrueType face, InDesign replaces those selected glyphs with the small cap variants that are part of the OpenType typeface. (By the way, when applied to OpenType text, either of the two Small Caps choices in the dropdown menu above will pull from the SC glyphs in the font. So avoiding the one with OpenType in its name won’t help.)
These are the characters that drop out for the unlucky few. I’m saying it’s perplexing because the vast majority of users, including myself, never encounter a problem with OpenType small caps, they print just fine, and beautifully at that.
But when the occasional plea for help comes my way, I’ve learned it it almost always has something to do with variant glyphs in an OpenType font. The small caps issue is just the most commonly encountered instance, especially since a) It’s not obvious to the user that it’s happening; and b) There’s no way to disable it. (I’ve asked.)
If the hapless designer can’t buy a better office printer, or switch to a commercial printer with more compatible equipment; the only solution is to either use a Type 1 or True Type typeface, so that they get the scaled characters instead of the variant glyphs; or turn off Small Caps and scale uppercase text down by hand; or … horrors … convert the small caps glyphs to outlines. Blech, blech and blech!
Has this ever happened to you? Were you able to pinpoint the exact cause (e.g., an old RIP or something)? I’d love to hear about it.
This article was last modified on December 19, 2021
This article was first published on May 11, 2008
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