Re: (font-related) \caps \fontCaps and \smallCaps

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Is it possible to check real small caps are available within the
> font?

The whole issue is VERY problematic.  Today, many fonts already
contain glyphs for small caps, however, lilypond isn't able to access
them!  Reason is that lilypond currently misses an interface to
OpenType layout tables.  There are five feature tags related to caps
defined in the OpenType 1.6 specification:

  cpsp    Capital Spacing
  c2pc    Petite Capitals From Capitals
  c2sc    Small Capitals From Capitals
  pcap    Petite Capitals
  smcp    Small Capitals

The `normal' one is `smcp', BTW.  If you activate it, small letters in
the input are converted to small caps letters.

Before having access to OpenType features, I consider any change in
the font interface premature.

Please read the documentation of the `fontspec' package (for both
XeTeX and luatex), which provides a user-friendly LaTeX interface to
OpenType fonts.  The documentation also shows many OpenType features
in action, including caps related ones.

  http://www.ctan.org/get/macros/xetex/latex/fontspec/fontspec.pdf

I suggest that we develop (after release of 2.14) a not-yet-written
API similar to the fontspec interface.


    Werner