Ligatures in OpenType: Discretionary vs. Standard
So, my company bought one of the brand-new FontShop OpenType faces, FF Nexus, and as I was dropping it into our templates to test size and leading I noticed a very odd thing. As part of the standard ligatures, the s_t combination was included. This particular ligature is not one I expected to see in the standard set, especially since the discretionary ligatures contains the rest of the historical ligatures (c_t, f_s, etc.)
Of course, this causes a problem, as in order to get any ligatures, I have to turn on the standard set, but then I automatically get the s_t ligature. Which of course, I don't want.
FontShop has offered to fix this for me (very nice of them indeed) by removing the s_t ligature, but it's got me wondering, should there be a standard for OpenType of which ligatures should be in the standard set?
My preference for the standard set would be:
f_f
f_i
f_l
f_f_i
f_f_l
The discretionary set can contain the rest. I'd love to see a function built into InDesign that lets you set which ligatures the program uses, but I suppose that's another question entirely.
28.Feb.2005 3.38pm
i'd love to see a function in InD that lets you set your own OT substitutions, but i doubt that'd ever happen.
28.Feb.2005 3.42pm
Probably the st lig belongs in 'hlig' (which is activated alongside 'dlig' in current Adobe UIs).
There are a bunch of other rarer f-ligs sith letters such as b, j, k, and sometimes t. They are rare in the sense that most typefaces don't have them, but if present they would go in standard ligatures.
Also, once you get out of the realm of normal text faces, and push into things like script or handwriting fonts, there may be many more standard ligatures.
Finally, Adobe is fond of the "Th" ligature - as am I - and puts it in standard ligatures ('liga'). However, there is some debate as to whether it belongs in the standard ligatures or it should be discretionary. I prefer it in standard ligatures, myself.
Setting which ligatures the app uses would be interesting, but would have to interact with specific fonts. Maybe one of these days, though. You can always put in a feature request at: http://www.adobe.com/support/feature.html
Regards,
T
28.Feb.2005 4.25pm
Setting which ligatures the app uses would be interesting, but would have to interact with specific fonts.
Yes, exactly. It would be nice not just for ligatures, but for other substitutions as well, effectivly building your own style stylistic set for different fonts.
28.Feb.2005 5.57pm
Thomas, I agree that the st lig should be in the 'hlig' (that stands for historical ligatures, right?)
Since the OpenType panel shows which features are available, it seems like a little more coding would allow you to toggle specific sets of ligatures (sort of like the semi-functioning "fi, fl but not ffi ffl" ligature function in Quark 4 & 5).
Still not sure why FontShop added s_t to the standard ligatures. I hope that they drop that, otherwise I'm going to have to request custom versions of every OpenType font I get from them.
28.Feb.2005 10.22pm
Yes, 'hlig' is historical ligatures.
If somebody making an OpenType font wanted to specify additional levels of ligatures, they could always use stylistic sets to do it.
As for FontShop, I wouldn't assume anything from one of their first OpenType fonts. It's probably either a bug or an individual designer's choice, not a long-term general policy decision by the foundry.
Cheers,
T
9.Jun.2005 6.14am
one problem with using the ’hlig’ feature for discretionary ligatures is that Photoshop CS does not reference the ’hlig’ feature. This might not be such a problem if there were a glyph pallete in Photoshop, but to my knowledge there isn’t one.
9.Jun.2005 1.38pm
>>>if there were a glyph pallete in Photoshop
That is a huge problem and the number one question of my customers. How do I get all your nice PUA characters into Photoshop? And I can’t tell them anything else but: use the character palette or create the text in Illustrator an paste it into Photoshop …
I can’t see any reason why InDesign and Illustrator have a glyph palette but Photoshop hasn’t.
Ralf
http://www.fonts.info