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Today's OpenType fonts have a lot of features included like:

kerning, capital spacing, ligatures, old style figures and stylistic sets.

I miss these features a lot. Is there a way to select those features in Inkscape?

Does anybody know if they are accessible, or at least planed?

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4 Answers 4

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Tavmjong Bah has implemented the font variants in Inkscape, see http://tavmjong.free.fr/blog/?p=1442. This will be available in the upcoming v0.92, but if you're impatient then you can try the development builds

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    Just tried 0.92 (which is released by now, apt-gettable in Ubuntu); I can pick between e.g. Normal and Titling for Capitals, but I can't see where to select Stylistic Alternatives …
    – unhammer
    Commented Jun 2, 2017 at 19:42
  • I tried it with 0.92.3 on ubuntu, I can select many variations (caps, numeric, ligatures, ...) and manually type feature settings like ss01.
    – sauerburger
    Commented Aug 8, 2018 at 11:29
  • i am using 0.92 on windows. are alternative styles available on windows version??
    – oldboy
    Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 1:52
  • nevermind. i believe i found it. you have to open up the text panel instead of a checkbox at the top
    – oldboy
    Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 2:01
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Still looking for a solution, but could find a workaround. This can be also easily implemented as a plugin for Inkscape:

Latex source:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{fontspec, xunicode, xltxtra}
\setmainfont[RawFeature={+liga,+kern,+ss03,+onum}]{EB Garamond}
\begin{document}
The flavour of coffee -- 0123456789
\end{document}

The commands:

$ xelatex testfile.tex
$ pdftocairo -svg testfile.pdf
$ inkscape testfile.svg

The result:

The flavour of coffee -- 0123456789

The glyphs can be separated by hitting shift+ctrl+U.

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2

A Google search indicates that others have asked as well but I'm not seeing much planned. A project did exist, and received funding to improve the text --- it was implemented already. http://www.linuxfund.org/projects/inkscape/

Here is a Feature Request, but it has gotten very little support. I'd venture to say its because Inkscape is an illustration suite, not a Desktop Publishing suite.

The only thing I'm finding that may be of use to you is, Glyph Substitution. It sounds like it has some issues particularly on Windows though.

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If you are reluctant to install a new Inkscape version to use Diederik's solution, you can add OpenType feature options to the font name, as described in a LibreOffice thread (The thread is about LibreOffice, but the same/similar syntax also applies to Inkscape).

So, for example, to use style set 1 of font Abc in Inkscape, type Abc:ss01 in the font selection field (ALT+X).

However, I was neither able to use this for fonts with spaces in their name, nor to use options like onum.

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  • Thanks for confirming Diederik's answer, however that should be a comment on that answer. Likewise, the link about LibreOffice is nice but not really applicable (the question is about Inkscape)
    – Scribblemacher
    Commented Aug 8, 2018 at 12:09
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    @Scribblemacher, thanks for your feedback. I have added the link to the LibreOffice thread because this is my source of information. I've updated the answer to make it clear that the answer also applies to Inkscape and thus matches the question.
    – sauerburger
    Commented Aug 8, 2018 at 12:26
  • i am using 0.92 on windows. are alternative styles available on windows version??
    – oldboy
    Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 1:55
  • nevermind. i believe i found it. you have to open up the text panel instead of a checkbox at the top
    – oldboy
    Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 2:01

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