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Opal Feature Requests

Hey David,

I use the Apple "Chalkboard" font for most of my outlines and I would dearly love to be able to occasionally make a word or phrase appear to be in italics.  I know this is possible in some applications despite the fact that Chalkboard doesn't have a true italic font available.

What are the chances you could enable this capability?

Thanks,

Jim

Probably zero.

If the underlying text engine doesn't support it, Opal won't support it. (My guess is that any application that does allow you to slant it is using its own text engine, e.g. Word.)

You could make a feature request to Apple to provide an italic version of the font... Or to support obliquing. (Hmm, I may make that request too -- duplicates increase the chance that a feature will get implemented.)

I thought you'd probably say that :-)

Where does one send such requests to Apple?

Jim

Aha!  :-)

After hours of frustrating labor I was able to create my own oblique Chalkboard font!  I did it in a demo version of a commercial font editor first, but that put watermarks in.  But then I applied what I learned there to the less than friendly (not that the commercial program was all that easy), but free, program "FontForge".

All without the slightest idea what I was doing!

I'm very proud of myself (if you can't tell :-)

Jim

PS: If anyone is interested I can write up the procedure.

For feedback:
1. Sign up for a free developer account and use bugreporter.apple.com (I think this gives you the greatest chance of hearing from Apple)
2. http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/

I'll have to remember FontForge!

David,

Thanks for the Apple info - I've got an earful for them!

One unfriendly thing about FontForge is that it's an X11 app.

Jim