PagePlus

Using fonts

One of the most dramatic ways to change your document’s appearance is to change the fonts used in your artistic text, frame text, or table text. Applying different fonts to a character or entire paragraph can communicate very different messages to your intended readership.

Font assignment is very simple in PagePlus, and can be done from the Fonts tab, Text context toolbar, or in the Character dialog (via right-click, or from the Format menu). A font belongs to one of the following types as indicated by the symbol before the font’s name. TrueType OpenType Type 1 (PostScript) Raster (bitmap)

The Fonts tab lets you:

• Apply fonts easily without dialog navigation.

• Assign fonts to be Websafe or favorites.

• View most recently used, Websafe, and your favorite fonts simultaneously.

• Search for installed fonts via search box.

• Hover-over preview of fonts applied to your document’s text (optional).

• Change a font for another throughout your publication or website (by right-click Select All).

• Access Serif FontManager (if purchased).

 The Fonts tab is automatically hidden by default, but can be viewed by clicking the arrow button at the left of your workspace. You may also need to click the Fonts label to display the Fonts tab.

Assigning and previewing fonts

The fonts shown in the Fonts tab represent the currently installed fonts on your computer. This means that these fonts are available to format any selected character or paragraph.

To assign a font:

• Select some text, then click on the font name in the Fonts tab to assign the font to the text.

If you want to switch off the hover-over Glass Effect font highlighter, go to Tools>Options>UI Settings and uncheck Glass Effect.

You can preview how fonts will appear on your selected text by enabling PagePlus’s font preview feature.

To preview fonts:

1. From the tab’s  Tab Menu button (top-right of tab), check the Preview Font option.

2. Select a section of text (a letter, word, or paragraph) in your document.

3. On the Fonts tab, hover over any font in the list. The selected text will update to show how the font will appear in situ.

4. (Optional) Click on the font in the Fonts tab to assign the font to the text.

Viewing recently used, Websafe, and Favorite fonts

Once you’ve assigned some fonts to your page’s text you can quickly reuse those fonts from the collapsible Recently Used Fonts category at the top of the tab (the last six assigned fonts are shown). As well as recently used fonts, you can display a standard set of Websafe fonts or your font Favorite in separate expandable categories in the Fonts tab.

To assign a font to be Websafe or a favorite:

You can assign to the category by right-clicking any font from the All Fonts section, then choosing Websafe or Favorite, respectively. To remove from a category, right-click any font and then uncheck its category.

To collapse/expand any font category:

• Click the arrow button at the top right of each category.

To hide/show a font category:

• To hide, click the  Tab Menu button at the top-right of the Fonts ta
  b, and then uncheck the Most Recently Used, Favorites, or Websafe option from the Categories submenu. Check any category to show it again (or switch on the Favorites category initially).
  – or -
  From Tools>Options>Text>General, check/uncheck the equivalent options.

Searching for fonts

The Fonts tab also hosts an extremely useful search feature which searches for your installed fonts in several ways. You can search for an individual font name (in full or part of), font types, attributes, as well as fonts currently being used in your publication.

To search for fonts (by name):

1. At the bottom of the Fonts tab, click in the search input box.

2. You can type the full font name or a portion of the font name (for partial matching).

This immediately produces a filtered subset of fonts in the Fonts tab (replacing the fonts previously listed) with categories still honoured.

Several methods can be used to search for multiple font names. You can use “space” or “comma, followed by space” to perform “AND” or “OR” operations, respectively. For example:

Search	Displays…	To show…
	fonts with the word “courier” in their name	Courier Courier New
	fonts with the word “new” in their name	Courier New Times New Roman
	fonts with the words “courier” and “new” in the same font name.	Courier New
	fonts containing the word “arial” or fonts with the word “new”.	Arial Arial Black Arial Narrow Courier New Times New Roman
	fonts beginning with “ar”	Arch Archer Arial Arial Black Arial Narrow Artane Elongated BT

To search for fonts (by attribute or type):

1. At the bottom of the Fonts tab, click the  button.

2. In the pop-up list, select an attribute to filter on. The results are shown in the font list automatically.

   Bold	displays naturally bold fonts
   Italic	displays naturally italic fonts
   Monospaced	displays fonts which give fixed character widths on applied text
   Symbol	displays fonts based on symbols
   Styles	displays fonts used in text styles available to the document
   TrueType	displays TrueType fonts only
   Type1	displays PostScript fonts
   Websafe	displays fonts suitable for use in web sites

 

To search for currently used fonts:

• From the  button, choose Used.

Note that the search button changes from  to  when filtered results are displayed. Clicking the latter button will display an unfiltered list again.

Any combination of strings, made up of text and attributes, can be assembled to filter your fonts. By using the “AND ” and “OR” approach, you can create very powerful search criteria. However, a balance must be struck between the complexity of your search and the number of fonts installed. Why create a complex search just to navigate a small number of installed fonts?

Changing common fonts

Changing one font for another is very simple for a single portion of text, but the Fonts tab can take things a step further by allowing a font to be located throughout the entire document (see above), and if necessary, swapped for another font. It’s simple to then re-assign a different font to the selected text.

To select (and change) a font throughout your document:

1. Right-click a font displayed in the Fonts tab.

   If the font is used in your document, you’ll see a “Select All n Instance(s)” message (n is the number of times the font is used). If there are no occurrences, you’ll get a “Not currently used” message.

2. Click the message label, making it shaded in blue—text formatted with the chosen font is selected.

3. Hover over font names in your font list. Click on a chosen font to apply it to the selected text (if you’ve used the Used fonts search you may need to clear the results before selecting a replacement font).

Using FontManager

FontManager is a separate Serif-produced application to PagePlus which allows you to manage your system’s fonts. The product’s main features are as follows:

• Manage TrueType, OpenType, PostScript, and raster fonts

• Preview fonts in character tables, as font faces, or as text samples

• Group fonts for easier management

• Install/uninstall fonts individually or in groups

• Search for fonts

• Detect and resolve duplicate fonts

• Detect font problems

• Print font reports

• Font substitution and problem resolution

• Preview and copy Unicode characters

• Examine your system for font errors

• Dynamic font install of unavailable fonts when opening PagePlus documents; with auto-uninstall of fonts on program exit

• Advanced previewing and formatting of currently selected PagePlus text

For more details, see the PagePlus Help or User Guide supplied with the product.

To open FontManager:

• Display the Fonts tab and click the  FontManager button. FontManager launches (if installed).

To switch on/off PagePlus text previews:

• In PagePlus, go to Tools>Options>User Interface>UI Settings and check/uncheck Preview selected text in Main view and/or Preview selected text in Text Sample view.

Fonts with OpenType features

Microsoft Windows supplies OpenType and TrueType font types as standard. You’ll be able to spot these font types by their symbols  ( and for OpenType and TrueType, respectively) shown in your Font drop-down list on the Text context toolbar, in the Text Style dialog, and in the fonts list in the Fonts tab.

To extend the capability of your installed font, PagePlus allows you to take advantage of additional font features built into your font’s design. These allow font characters to be changed either via substitution rules or by manual choice. As an example you may see extra glyphs, i.e. letter shape variations, appear on the character.

Note that some fonts don’t support additional font features, with others supporting only a limited font features. This is dependent on how the font designer has created the font originally. As an example, Windows Vista fonts such as Constantia, Calibri, and Cambria possess limited OpenType font features. However, if you’re a professional PagePlus user and involved with advanced typography, it’s likely that you’ve already purchased and installed professional fonts, allowing you to get the very best out of this feature.

Font-dependent features may include:

	Ligatures Replace a pair or triplet of characters such as “fi” of “ffi” with a single glyph. In this case it avo ids the problem of the dot of the “i” conflicting visually with the hook of the “f”. Discretionary ligatures are not used as standard because they are typically too ornate for standard text, these are more decorative in nature and, as the name implies, are intended to be substituted manually.
	Stylistic Sets/Stylistic Alternates Stylistic sets can give you many options of what you want the font to look like and combine preset choices such as which ligatures and alternates are available by default. These can be especially ornate or flowing versions of a glyph (sometimes called “swash” variants). This may be as simple as offering a “g” with and without a closed loop.
	Small Caps/Petite Caps A small cap “A” should use a special glyph, which typically looks like a capital “A”, but is shorter, but has the same stem widths etc. as the capital, so it can’t be achieved by just scaling the capital. Petite caps are like small caps but even smaller.
	Case sensitive forms These are variants of punctuation such as brackets that, for example, are designed to align more nicely with capitals. These would generally sit a little higher in the line, because most capitals don’t have descenders.
	Superscripts and subscripts These are smaller raised or lowered versions of characters; the scaling issues are the same as for Small Caps. Some fonts also provide Ordinals, which are a form of superscript intended to be used for the letters in “2nd“, or forms that are intended to be used in chemical or mathematical notation.
	Fractions In text like “1/3″, the digits before the slash are made smaller and raised, and the digits after the slash are made smaller and may be lowered. A special narrow version of the slash may be used.
	Old style figures These are digits that have a bit more character (at right); they often sit lower in the line. Compare with the more usual “lining” figures that are more uniform (at left).
	Proportional figures These are variable width digits (at right); for example, a “1″ that is narrower than a “2″, which would look good when set in body text, as opposed to the more usual tabular figures (at left) that are all the same width so they line up in columns or tables.

As for any other text attribute, you can apply the font feature to selected characters or to a text style equally either from the Text context toolbar or Text Style dialog, respectively. The option names are similar in both locations.

• Options vary according to font. If no options are offered, the font does not provide any additional font features.

To apply OpenType features to selected characters:

1. Select your text which has the OpenType font assigned to it.

2. From the Text context toolbar, click the down arrow on the OpenType flyout. On the flyout, the displayed options (showing sample text and hover preview) vary according to the features supported by the OpenType font.

   

3. Select an option(s) from the flyout.

To apply OpenType features to text styles:

1. From Format>Character, select the Character – OpenType option. Expand the tree for all OpenType features.

   

2. Enable font features under the Alternates, Numeric, Capitals, and Details sections.

3. Alternates: The OpenType Alternates dialog (above) offers glyph substitutions or alternate representations such as swashes, stylistic sets, contextual alternates, stylistic alternates, and titling alternates.

4. Numeric: offers OpenType features used primarily when setting numbers, e.g. Figure Styles, Figure Width, and Number Position.

5. Capitals: groups case-base features together such as small caps, petite caps, and case-sensitive forms.

6. Details: dynamically displays every OpenType feature in list form, derived from the font’s internal tables. As such you can set less common OpenType Features, unavailable from the previous Alternates, Numeric, and Capitals sections.

• Some attributes such as superscript, subscript, small caps, ligatures, and fractions take advantage of OpenType features where possible. From Format>Character>Font, ensure that Use default OpenType features is checked; if unchecked, features are not used by default and you’ll be able to review fonts without OpenType features changing the font’s appearance. If OpenType features are not available in your font, PagePlus can instead apply small caps, ligatures, and fractions which are independent of OpenType features.  

• If an option is shown in brackets it is not supported by the currently used font. This allows the feature to be switched on for text styles, where the current font isn’t known.  

Using fonts