I’ve recently been using a typeface in Figma and noticed that when stylistic alternates are selected that kerning is no longer applied between stylistic alternates and default glyphs.
I have included an image below which shows text rendered in InDesign (with the typeface’s default kerning options) in black and the text rendered in Figma in red. In the left example, the characters are spaced exactly as expected using the kerning from the type designer. They are the same in both applications. In the right example, the red text rendered in Figma no longer applies the kerning found between the alternate lowercase a and o, or the alternate lowercase t and lowercase o – even though these kerning pairs are present in the typeface and render in InDesign.
If I overlay the black and red text samples, the left example (no alternates) aligns perfectly, whereas the text containing alternates does not.
I’ve checked several other OpenType typefaces that I own that contain stylistic alternates and the issue is present with every single one of them.
Why would this be happening and is there a fix beyond manually correcting the kerning?
