[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

PhD? :-) (Of all the things, JUST went through this with a customer. Insisted that we use smallcaps for PhD, MD, etc. I warned him what would happen if the embedded font wasn't supported and all that, and sho'nuff, it happened and then he made us go back through and "un-small-cap" them, to quote him.)

When dealing with purely "visual" cases:

• Title pages
• Headings
• Captions
• "p.m." vs. "P.M."
• First few words
• First line

using a font-variant won't hurt one bit. Leave the true underlying text alone:

<span class="smallcaps">PhD</span> + 4 <span class="smallcaps">pm</span>

or

PhD + 4 pm or 4 PM

In the cases where smallcaps are actually "important" (emphasis), it may be best to tweak slightly (<span class="smallcaps"> -> <i> or <em>).

The few edge cases I'm not 100% sure on straddle the line between "important" and "visual". For example, some Style Guides or languages require smallcaps in references (see the "Tracking" heading in this fantastic article about Latex+microtype).

We've also discussed the severe disadvantages of "fake small caps" many times over the years. I would take a device that fails in displaying font-variant over F<small>AKE</small> S<small>MALL</small> C<small>APS</small> any day of the week.

Originally Posted by Hitch

ANYWAY...assuming that the devices and software "fail" correctly, then using font-feature settings should be relatively harmless, but we all know that we don't know the entire list of which devices support that, which don't and all that good stuff.

It boils back to:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And if you are selling your eBooks, then using font-feature-settings is a very bad idea.

But for something like small caps, you will notice it.

I would like to see font-variant: small-caps falling back in a very bad way "with my own eyes". There must be someone, somewhere, who has done testing/images of this.

Since JSWolf is such a strong proponent, there should be ample proof.

Closest I could find is Doitsu in 2017, in which ADE generates its own "fake caps" instead of an actual smallcaps font...

But I still believe font-variant (with flaws) is a better alternative than the other forced "solutions".

Originally Posted by Hitch

[...] (although, mind you he sent back edits quite literally saying things like "move this letter 1/32nd of an inch to the left" throughout)

And let me guess, no Styles were used!