Feature request: OpenType font features

[Tim Kempton]

I've been impressed that Flex supports Graphite font features. 

Back in 2021 SIL started to remove Graphite from their fonts e.g.

> Graphite has been removed. Application and OS support for OpenType has greatly improved, so the need for Graphite in this font is greatly reduced. If this affects you, and you find that OpenType does not provide sufficient support for your needs, please contact us right away.

From https://software.sil.org/doulos/release-6-000/

Assuming that Flex doesn't yet support OpenType font features, it would be great if it could. For example it would allow me to remove staves from the Chao tone letters so I can emulate Keith Snider's pitch bar notation in a unicode compliant way. (My current workaround is to use the older SIL Doulos v5 font. A possible future workaround is to remove the staves myself and create a new font.)

Tim

[Tim Kempton]

I've been attempting to use one of the workarounds but I've encountered a possible bug:

> current workaround is to use the older SIL Doulos v5 font

This works fine with Format > Set up Vernacular Writing Systems... as shown in the November screenshot. However I've come across a possible bug in the Format > Styles... set up. When I select a font feature it only appears to display on the dictionary preview and not in the lexicon view. 

To reproduce in Flex v9.2.11:

• Ensure that you have SIL Doulos v5 installed (later versions don't have Graphite)
• Open the Sena 3 sample database
• Format > Styles... > Normal > Font > Sena > Font features > Small caps > OK

Result: only the dictionary preview shows small caps for the lexeme form (see red circle in screenshot below), but I was expecting it to show in the lexicon view.

In my opinion it would be better to add OpenType font features rather than fix this bug. It doesn't look like my original feature request has been added to the official list on JIRA yet. I was assuming this forum is the correct place to suggest feature requests, but let me know if there is a better way to do that.

( The reason I'm using Styles is because I want my teammates to see the same styles as on my screen. i.e.

On 14 Mar 2025, Ken Zook wrote:

> "FLEx stores the font and keyboard independently for each user ... However, fonts can also be set in Format > Styles. Styles will override the default font you set in the Writing System Properties. The style settings are part of the fwdata file..."
https://groups.google.com/g/flex-list/c/DaplGKotz3M/m/5FZ3uTjqAQAJ )

[Tim Kempton]

Ok, actually the feature request has been added to JIRA. The day after I suggested it:  

LT-22324 Split Font Features from 'Enable Graphite' and support OpenType features

Many thanks! And apologies; I need to improve my understanding on how to search JIRA.