Small caps in Indesign

I have the Adobe Chapparal Pro typeface family, and I was under the impression it came with small caps as part of the package. I see small caps in the GLYPHS menu, but I do not see it as an option in the drop box (at the top left of screen where you select roman, itlaic, bold etc ...)
Does this mean I don't own a real small caps version of Chapparal Pro? If so ...how can I find this font to go with the rest of the font family? I have not seen it anywhere.
Thank you,
Chemol

The fact that a font is an OpenType font does not guarantee that it indeed has small caps or old style figures or any other advanced typographical features. You need to look at the OpenType drop down and see whether that feature is indeed supported for the font in question.
- Dov

Similar Messages

Problem with Small Caps

I have a problem with small caps when using Times New Roman and Helvetica, but not when using Adobe Garamond Pro, and would like to find out why.
I generate the small caps within InDesign by the "TT" box in the Control Window. Adobe Garamond comes up with beautiful small caps that blend in with the surrounding text. When I do the same with Helvetica, the small caps, especially if they have normal caps amongst them, are quite inelegant looking because of different letter widths.
So I did some experiments with half a dozen other serif and sans-serif fonts and none of them were as elegant as Adobe Garamond Pro. For a sample of what I mean, download:
http://www.mediafire.com/?z5fm0zndmzm
which compares three fonts: Adobe Garmond, Heletica, and Times New Roman.
Unfortunately, I did not pick up this problem until I received my first proof from the printers, and now I will have to change all the Helvetica small caps to normal caps, as I can see no other way of overcoming this inelegancy.
I checked in New Scientist magazine (it uses a serif and sans-serif font throughout, and what I thought I remembered as small caps to begin their stories) to see what they do, but they actually use caps instead of small-caps at the beginning of stories.
Three questions:
Q1: Is the way I generate small caps the correct way?
Q2: Is there something wrong with my Helvetica and Times New Roman fonts?
Q3: Could it be that only Adobe Garamond has an internal, properly designed small caps?
I have checked the attributes of the fonts: Garamond is Open Type Postscript, Helvetica is PostScript Type 1 , and Times New Roman is TrueType.
Any comments most appreciated.

Thanks for the hints. I tried Scott's method and it works with a bit of extra adjustment. The settings I obtained for 12 point Helvetica were:
Horizontal and vertical scaling: 70.5%;
Stroke: 0.1 pt
Tracking: +25 em
Baseline shift: +0.1 pt
The steps to obtain small-caps 12 pt Helvetica are:
Step 1: Type text as normal.
Step 2: Select only the lower-case text you want to convert to small caps. i.e if what is to become small caps already has a capital (such as a place name) do not apply the settings to the capitals, unless that's the effect you want.
Step 3: Apply the above settings manually or via or Character Style.
Problem 1: How do I rid my Character Style of the font size so that only the scaling factors remain? As it is, if I want to apply small-caps to a different font size than the one I have set up, I have to manually change the font size after applying the style.
Problem 2: The scaling factors do not appear to work for changes in font size. When I used 24 pt and applied the above settings, the small-caps were too thin. The method only really works for a particular size, which in reality is all you would normally require.

How do I change caps of an OpenType font to small caps in my InDesign cc document?

Greetings, Community. It would be great if I could discover how to change caps of an OpenType font to small caps in my InDesign cc document. That's the simple question.
To be more exact, I have an 18-page play that contains stage directions in caps in parentheses, which I would like to change to small caps. The font I'm using is an OpenType, Minion Pro, with small caps.
Another thing is, I'd ideally like to be able to do that without changing all caps in the document, and also, to not have to convert the caps to lower case in order to do it.
My source document (which I Placed in my InDesign document) is Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac.
I did go to Microsoft to find out how to do it in Word, but could only find a solution for Word for Windows.
I did try their solution anyhow (a macro) but it didn't work.
     Thanks a lot. It's great being in InDesign even though I had my good years with QuarkXpress, which eventually became impossible for me.
     Morty Sklar

Is this what you're talking about, Michael? Where do I paste it? (The whole thing?)
     Morty
// Change case interactively. Find/change options should be set in InDesign's Find/Change window.
// Peter Kahrel -- www.kahrel.plus.com
#targetengine "change_case";
create_palette().show();
function create_palette ()
    var w = Window.find ("palette", "Change case");
    if (w === null)
        return create_palette_sub ();
    return w;
function create_palette_sub ()
    var changetype;
    var w = new Window ("palette", "Change case", undefined, {resizeable: true});
        w.alignChildren = "fill";
        var options = [ChangecaseMode.lowercase, ChangecaseMode.uppercase];
        var rb = w.add ("panel");
            var upper_to_lower = rb.add ("radiobutton", undefined, "A > a");
            var lower_to_upper = rb.add ("radiobutton", undefined, "a > A");
        var smallcaps = w.add ("checkbox", undefined, " Apply SC");
        var b = w.add ("group {orientation: 'column', alignChildren: 'fill'}");
        var find = b.add ("button", undefined, "Find");
            var change = b.add ("button", undefined, "Change");
            var change_all = b.add ("button", undefined, "Change all");
            var change_find = b.add ("button", undefined, "Change/find");
        if (app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat.indexOf ("\\u") > -1)
            upper_to_lower.value = true;
            changetype = ChangecaseMode.lowercase;
        else
            lower_to_upper.value = true;
            changetype = ChangecaseMode.uppercase;
        upper_to_lower.onClick = function () {changetype = ChangecaseMode.lowercase};
        lower_to_upper.onClick = function () {changetype = ChangecaseMode.uppercase};
        var found, found_counter;
        find.onClick = function () {
            if (this.text === 'Find') {
                found = app.documents[0].findGrep();
                if (found.length > 0){
                    found_counter = 0;
                    find.text = 'Find next';
                    show_found (found[found_counter]);
                } else {
                    alert ("No (more) matches found.");
            } else {
                found_counter++;
                if (found_counter < found.length){
                    show_found (found[found_counter]);
                } else {
                    find.text = 'Find';
                    alert ("No (more) matches found.");
        change.onClick = function () {
            found[found_counter].changecase(changetype);
            if (smallcaps.value == true) {
                found[found_counter].capitalization = Capitalization.smallCaps;
        change_find.onClick = function (){
            if (found_counter < found.length){
                found[found_counter].changecase(changetype);
                if (smallcaps.value == true) {
                    found[found_counter].capitalization = Capitalization.smallCaps;
                found_counter++;
                if (found_counter < found.length){
                    show_found (found[found_counter]);
                } else {
                    alert ("No (more) matches found.");
        change_all.onClick = function () {
            for (var i = found_counter; i < found.length; i++) {
                found[i].changecase(changetype);
                if (smallcaps.value == true) {
                    found[i].capitalization = Capitalization.smallCaps;
        w.onDeactivate = w.onActivate = function () {find.text = 'Find'}
    return w;
    } // create_palette_sub
function show_found (f)
    if (f.parentTextFrames.length === 0) // If in overset text
        app.activeWindow.activePage = find_page(f.parentStory.textContainers[0].endTextFrame);
    else
        f.select();
        app.activeWindow.activePage = find_page (f.parentTextFrames[0]);
function find_page(o)
    if (o.hasOwnProperty ("parentPage")) // CS5 and later
        return o.parentPage;
    else
        return find_page_classic(o)
function find_page_classic (o)
    try
        if (o.constructor.name == "Page")
            return o;
        switch (o.parent.constructor.name)
            case "Character": return find_page_classic (o.parent);
            case "Cell": return find_page_classic (o.parent.texts[0].parentTextFrames[0]);
            case "Table" : return find_page_classic (o.parent);
            case "TextFrame" : return find_page_classic (o.parent);
            case "Group" : return find_page_classic (o.parent);
            case "Story": return find_page_classic (o.parentTextFrames[0]);
            case "Footnote": return find_page_classic (o.parent.storyOffset);
            case "Page" : return o.parent;
        catch (_) {return ""}

Why is InDesign is using fake small caps instead of the real ones included in the font?

I was trying to use the small caps in Hoefler Text, which I did by hitting the small caps button. Instead of using real small caps (which should be in proportion to the capitals), InDesign created fake small caps by scaling down the capitals (which is disgustingly ugly). I know Hoefler Text includes real small caps because I can see them in the glyphs palette. How do I get InDesign to use the real small caps instead of creating the fake ones?

Just checked the font file. "Hoefler Text" comes courtesy of Mac OS X, pre-installed with your system. It's an OpenType font with TrueType outlines (actually a collection of four styles into one single file), and its typographic features, including the Small Caps charrington42 noticed in the Glyphs panel, are guided not by OpenType features but by Apple's AAT features.
InDesign cannot use AAT features; only Apple's own software can. TextEdit, for example, can access the real small capitals:
You could submit "Please support AAT" to Adobe using the Feature Request form -- I don't see anything against it. Or perhaps just the fact that it's only applicable to a small amount of fonts, and on Mac OS X only.

Simulated helvetica small caps not displayed acceptably in PDF

It's a never ending battle, this trying to get some sense out of computers. In a post earlier this year (http://forums.adobe.com/message/1287805#12878) I asked how to overcome the lack of proper small caps in Helvetica. Sandee came back with a suggestion, which I followed up, and it seemed to give reasonable results. And within InDesign, and when printed, it works.
However, when I export to PDF the small caps are not shown correctly on the screen. (The PDF file can be downloaded from http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nmjlhmiwt3i). They look a mess unless you zoom in about 500%. They print okay, but I'm not having a messy looking PDF sent to the printer. It's nothing but offputting.
If that was the only difficulty I could probably accept it, but I intend making my two books freely available for download in PDF form and I certainly don't want rubbish-looking fonts on display.
It looks like my mock small caps may have to be replaced with caps.
QUES 1
Is it possible to make my mock small caps display acceptably on the screen within a PDF? I have tried exporting to PDF at various resolutions, and with optimize for web turned on and off, but that makes no difference.
QUES 2
Another option is to get hold of a Helvetica font (or similar) that does have small caps. Where could I get hold of one of those?
The original InDesign file from which the PDF was obtained, can be downloaded from http://www.mediafire.com/?zddtj5m5d3q in case anyone wants to play around.

Thanks for the responses. I'm surprised the PDF looked okay, so I've emailed it to half a dozen people to see how it looks on their system. Maybe it's my screen or my Adobe Reader that's at fault.
I have attached two screen captures of what it look like on my screen. One at 100%, the other at 200%.
I'd like to continue using Helvetica because it's the one I've used in about 200 sidebars. If I change fonts, I imagine I could be days cleaning up the text oversets or undersets. I did think of changing fonts, and looked at all the sans serifs on my system, including the Open Type ones, but none had small caps. And buying an expert set: I could spend the next two days trying to sort out where to buy one of those and whether it actually contain small caps. Plus, I can't justify a price in excess of $100 for the sake of 400 words.

Small caps - is there a way to change size ratio of lower to upper case?

I am using Adobe InDesign CS4 and one problem I've had is that when I select Small Caps on the character styles panel, lower case characters are about 60% the size of upper case characters. I'd like this to be more around 80% in my document.
I don't see a way to do this, so I'm having to avoid using Small Caps and am having to select various portions of each word and set them to different sizes.
Is there a setting I am missing for Small Caps that would save me this trouble? My typeface is Minion so I may also see if there's a variant available that uses well-crafted small caps.
Tim

Dave,
>.. adjust the size of the "lowercase" characters by using a GREP style
Yes ... and no.
It doesn't have to be an extremely complicated GREP style. You mention Unicode ranges, but it's not even necessary. You could try
>[a-z]
to select all lowercase characters, but it leaves out accented ones. Now specifying ranges for these doesn't work very good (to put it mildly), because they do not appear consecutively in the Unicode set.
Fortunately, GREP has a wildcard
>\l
for "lowercase", and this matches
i every
lowercase character (even Greek and Russian ones). It's equal to the POSIX expression
>[[:lower:]]
As this seems to work just the way you want, then why the "No"? The GREP style will be applied to
i all
lowercase characters in the paragraph, not just to the words you wanted.
[Warning: Dirty trick follows. Do Not Copy Unless Forced To.]
Of course you can
i force
the GREP style pick up 'unique' words by making them unique somehow. If you insert an invisible character
i before
and
i after
the words you want to mark -- in the case at hand, the ones you want to small-capitalize --, you can include the invisible characters in the GREP style. For example, by specifying
>~-\l+~-
you can "mark" words by inserting a soft hyphen before and after certain words. (This example also presumes only lowercase characters inbetween.) You don't have to use the soft hyphen, there are a couple more markers you could (ab)use. I think I'll leave it up to your imagination to wonder where it could possibly go wrong.

Small caps display as squares when exporting to PDF

Hello friends
I am using Indesign CS2. I've finished formatting my book and tried to export it to PDF.
It has all worked beautifully, with one snag: every font that was in small caps has displayed as squares.
If I change the style from small caps to "normal" or "all caps" then it displays in PDF correctly, even though it is the same font, same size etc.
Thing is, I really want to use small caps to differentiate my chapter headings as I think it looks stylish.
Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?
Helena

Hi Peter
I've removed all the small caps and replaced them with all caps in a different font. It looks fine. Problem solved!
There is something even more pressing on me now --- Indesign is refusing to change a style.
The footnotes text is too small, so I want to change it up from 8pt to 9pt.
OK easy, I hear you say! Just go to paragraph styles> footnote> edit style> change the font size from 8 to 9. Well I did that 3 hours ago and have been fighting with it ever since.
Now I am going to have to highlight each and every one of the 650 footnotes and apply 10pt to them. If I had known 3 hrs ago that I was going to spend 3 hours fiddling, I would have spent that time changing the footnotes one by one.

Small Caps disappeared

Hi,
I have InDesign-files made about one and a half monthes ago (with CS5).
When they were done they had text with small caps (font used was Arial and Trebuchet), and they worked fine. Now, when I opened those same files (which have not been edited in the mean time), all the small caps are now showing as regular text, and I can't get the small caps to appear.
This same behavior appears in both mac and windows cs5.
What has happened, and how can I fix that?
Best regards,
Johanna

Did you package the job? Check the file location for a fonts folder - then remove the fonts folder (copy it to a safe place)
It's a known bug.
http://indesignsecrets.com/document-fonts-feature-in-indesign-cs5-appears-buggy-with-small -caps.php

Script to replace small caps that are typed as capital letters with non-capital letters (A = a, B = b, etc...)

I'm looking for a way to replace small caps that are typed as capitals by their normal equivalent.
I've got a text that contains a lot of names which should all be set in small caps.
In fact they are, but because capital letters are used for first letters they don't scale.
Short: I would like to be able to look for A, B, C... (in small caps) and replace them with (a, b, c...) in small caps in one go.
(compare two arrays?? -> is this possible in indesign scripting)

Hi,
Actually, it works only with OpenType fonts and - in this case - can be managed by UI find...change feature.
With other type of font we need a real change of contents (another keyboard hit).
It could be done with this code (activeDocument is a target):
-- works for Open Type as well --
// For Latin Basic (ASCII from 65 to 90)
// changes a "cap" letter to a "small" letter
// if Capitalization.SMALL_CAPS is applied to
app.findGrepPreferences = app.findGrepPreferences = null;
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = "\\u";
app.findGrepPreferences.capitalization = Capitalization.SMALL_CAPS;
var
mSTART = 65, // ASCII number for "A"
Mstart = 97, // ASCII number for "a"
mDiff = 0,
mTarget = app.activeDocument,
mFound = mTarget.findGrep(),
len = mFound.length, cString;
while (len-->0) {
cString = mFound[len].contents;
mDiff = cString.charCodeAt(0) - mSTART;
if (mDiff > -1 && mDiff < 26)
mFound[len].contents = String.fromCharCode( Mstart + mDiff );
app.findGrepPreferences = app.findGrepPreferences = null;
Jarek

Small Caps ePub Issue

I am working on putting text into the ePub format and keep running into the same issue.
I want the title of the chapter to utilize Small Caps. Within InDesign I've got it look exactly the way I wish for it to - "Chapter One" appearing with small caps.
I've Highlighted the phrase "Chapter One" and applied a paragraph style that has the following features:
[no paragraph style] + next [same style] + Times New Roman + size: 24 pt + small point
When I export to ePub to view the document in Adobe Digital Editions these changes are not present. I've tried just about everything from applying character styles and nested styles, but nothing is working. I'd like these Small Cap appearances to work in the ePub versions as well.
Any thoughts on why this is not working?
Any help is much appreciated. Scouring the internet for a while has not turned up any advice.
Thanks in advance.

Hi- I have a problem with small caps and epub export too, in InD 5.0.
I defined a style with a nested stye that applies small caps for the first four words. I see this definition in the CSS output by InD:
span.no-style-override-2 {
font-variant: small-caps;
I do not see this style applied in any of the content. If I manually code it in:
<p class="first-graph" xml:lang="en-us"><span class="no-style-override-2">Eric and Kate, young</span> ....
it is correctly displayed. I'd like to get InDesign to export it correctly. I notice the same behavior in 5.5.
What can I do to have my nested style properly marked up in the epub export?
Thanks.

Office 2013 RTM: STILL no true small caps: WHY? WHY? WHY?

I have just un-installed the Office 2013 Preview, and installed the Office 2013 RTM 60-day trial.
I had hoped that between the two versions, the issue of missing true small caps in Word had been addressed. But no. Whilst Word 2013 supports OpenType ligatures and OpenType stylistic sets and OpenType old-style numbers and and and, it STILL DOES NOT SUPPORT
TRUE SMALL CAPS. Yes, it has a small caps function, but this just reduces the size of the font, instead of using the dedicated small caps letters included in a lot of OpenType fonts. What's the difference? The difference is that with true small caps, the stroke
width of upper case, lower case and small caps letters match, whereas in the cheapy, flimsy, yucky version that Office only offers, the small caps letters are thinner than the normal letters of that font - obviously so, as they are merely shrunken.
Try it for yourself. Type something like "AaMmXx" in an OpenType font with small caps, say, Calibri or Gabriola, at, say, 24pt, in Word 2013 and in Publisher 2013, and apply small caps in each, and print them. Compare the stroke widths. See what I mean?
Publisher does true small caps. Word doesn't.
So, why, Microsoft, why, oh why, oh why, when other typographical features (ligatures, stylistic sets, etc. etc. & so 4th) are supported in Word 2013, are small caps not? I just don't understand it. Why? Are small caps held to be something that only
professional typesetters should be allowed to use with typesetting programs like Publisher, whereas ordinary folk with Word shouldn't? Or is it trick to boost sales of Puiblisher? Or did no-one think about it? What is it? Because it's very annoying!

Well, in the second place, inserting characters via Insert Symbol is a pain in the posterior, and, of course, the spell checker doesn't recognise them. But in the first place, that only works if the font author has been thoughtful enough to give the small
caps glyphs Unicode code points, say, in the Private Use Area (like in Calluna). Normally, however, they don't - the small caps glyphs are only accessible via a small caps function, as lacking in Word. Excel is worse - apparently, Microsoft think that OpenType
advanced features ought not to be used in spreadsheets.
So having found fonts with small caps, the only way to use them is to use a font program either to assign the small caps glyphs to PUA code points, or to put them in a separate font (which at least means that other applications and spell checkers can use
them).

In Acrobat, is there a way to have a form field use small caps in place of lower-case text?

I found java script online that will force a field to be all caps (using it in the format tab > custom format script). But I have not been able to find anything to change the lowercase text to small caps. Anyone know how to do that (or if it just can't be done in Acrobat)?

But if you use a "small CAPs" font, you need to be sure the font is fully embedded in the PDF. If not, it is likely that users will not be able to use your form.

Using TextInput boxes to change to small Caps lettering with NO ....

Using two TextInput boxes (fName and lName) which are writting at the same time over to a (fullName) Text box, BUT change the data in here automaticly to 'small Caps' lettering with NO spaces.
I'm finding all sort of things but nothing close enough.Any help would be appriciated!
Thanks in advance aktell

How about this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute">
    <mx:Script>
        <![CDATA[
            protected function name_changeHandler(event:Event):void {
                var firstName:String = fName.text.toLowerCase();
                var lastName:String = lName.text.toLowerCase();
                fullName.text = firstName + lastName;
        ]]>
    </mx:Script>
    <mx:Label x="156" y="74" text="first"/>
    <mx:TextInput x="199" y="72" id="fName" change="name_changeHandler(event)"/>
    <mx:Label x="156" y="104" text="last"/>
    <mx:TextInput x="199" y="102" id="lName" change="name_changeHandler(event)"/>
    <mx:Text x="199" y="132" text="Text" id="fullName"/>
</mx:Application>
I think this does what you were asking for.
Chris

Pages 4.2 no Small Caps can be activated

I use a lot Pages for texts, flyers and posters. There seems to be a serious bug within Pages 4.2. if you open the typo panel and activate the Small Caps feature or Opentype fonts they though they can be clicked Pages does not transform the marked text into Small Caps. So the this opentype feature doesn't finction under Pages any more. I experienced also kerning problems within Pages 4.2 using the word "Test". There is no kerning between T and e using the Fakt font from Ourtype. The same problems don't occur in TextEdit and the same problems never occured under Leopard or Lion, so it seems to be a sole Pages 4.2. problem under Mountain Lion. I reported it to the Apple Bug Reporter (no reply so far) but would be interested what you guys think of it and if you experience the same problems?

Sorry for the spelling and grammar errors, here again the topic:
There seems to be a serious bug within Pages 4.2. If you open the typography panel and activate the small caps feature of opentype fonts though you can click the check-box Pages does not transform the marked text into small caps. So this opentype feature (small caps) doesn't function under Pages any more.
I experienced also kerning problems within Pages 4.2 using the word "Test". There is no kerning between T and e using the Fakt font from Ourtype. (There was never every any issue with this under Leopard or Lion!)
The same problems don't occur in TextEdit under Mountain Lion, so it seems to be a sole Pages 4.2. problem under Mountain Lion.
I reported it to the Apple Bug Reporter (no reply so far) but would be interested what you guys think about this and if you experience the same problems?

Is there a way to format text in Small Caps?

I have just installed Photoshop Elements 11 for Windows and am wondering if there is a setting to format text in small caps?

No, PSE doesn't recognize small caps as an option. You can do all caps, but small caps only happen by accident. For some reason it's not uncommon for the text tool to decide on its own only to do small caps, but there's no way to make it happen at will, at least not without an add-on like elements+ from simple photoshop. (There may be others that include small caps, but that's the only I can think of right now.)

Small caps in Indesign

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