OpenType Features - How Many Programs Support Them?

[Erwin Denissen]

You might be interested in downloading the free trial.
http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/

[William]

I have now updated the CHRONTXE.TTF file on the web.

The current version has many ligatures, including long s ligatures, with automated ligation and also has the sequences

thorn ae t

and

thorn a e t

both going to the abbreviation, which is the glyph which is also available directly at U+E75F, which is Alt 59231.

Hopefully some people with InDesign available will have a lot of fun with this font.

William

[William]

Some readers might find the following font of interest.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTE2.TTF

It is the font used to produce the version of CHRONTXE.TTF which is mentioned in my post in this thread dated Mon Mar 19, 2007 4:08 pm, with the CHRONTE2.TTF font being at the stage of the end of the step shown in the following web page, though I have only added ligatures so some stages have been missed out.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/dev ... sign_7.htm

CHRONTXE.TTF is as produced at the end of the following page, though the testing in InDesign has not been carried out by me.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/dev ... sign_8.htm

If one has the VOLT program then one may use File Open Font and then double-click on the word ligatures in the centre panel so as to open another window, which window shows the ligature substitution rules which I have added. Looking at the file using WordPad also is interesting.

Readers who would like to produce text displays using the font yet do not have access to InDesign can access most of the glyphs directly from the Unicode Private Use Area using Alt codes. The others are in regular Unicode. The Private Use Area codepoints used for the glyphs used for the ligatures in the ligature rules thus far added to the font are all in the range U+E707 to U+E7BF, though not all of those codepoints are used. That hexadecimal range corresponds to Alt 59143 to Alt 59327.

William Overington

20 March 2007

[William]

I have added a link to this thread in the following thread in the Serif forum.

http://www.serif.com/forum/ViewThread.asp?Thread=28025

That thread is entitled "PagePlus X3 Wishlist" and was started by the gentleman who is the Software Production Manager at Serif. The current version of PagePlus is PagePlus X2. The thread now contains two references to OpenType.

William Overington

22 March 2007

[William]

I have just added another experimental OpenType font to the web.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/SONNETQ.TTF

I have also added the development version of the font which would not normally be published. I have done this so that readers may study my ligature table using VOLT or WordPad if they so choose.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/SONNETQ0.TTF

The font is named Sonnet to Renaissance Lady Q. It started as a copy of my Sonnet to a Renaissance Lady font. The a and a space were removed from the name so that adding space and Q at the end did not make the font name longer than 28 characters which I seem to think from somewhere in the back of my mind is the limit, though I am unsure as to whether that it the case, yet I took the precaution just in case.

The original font is available using this link.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/SONNETRL.TTF

The font has its own thread in the Gallery forum of this webspace.

http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=1476

There are also some notes about the font on the following web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/fonts.htm

The Sonnet to a Renaissance Lady font contains some alternate glyphs, including some alternate glyphs for ligatures, mapped into a font-specific type tray from U+E421 upwards. The decimal equivalent of the hexadecimal value E421 is 58401.

The type tray may be thought of as a convenient way of storing glyph artwork for possible future use in an OpenType font whilst allowing the glyphs to be directly accessed using the non-OpenType version of the font.

In order to support research, the Sonnet to a Renaissance Lady font, from version 0.18, has zero width glyphs in U+EF01 to U+EF07 and also, in fact, in U+EF00, in case it becomes needed during the research.

I also wrote the following paragraph.

The font, Alternate Glyph Selectors V, has a name shortened from Alternate Glyph Selectors Visible. In order to support research, this font has visible glyphs in U+EF01 to U+EF07 and also, in fact, in U+EF00, in case it becomes needed during the research. The idea is that if someone produces an OpenType version of the Sonnet to a Renaissance Lady font such that, for example, the sequence g U+EF01 substitutes the alternate g glyph which is presently accessible at U+E421 in the font, then this Alternate Glyph Selectors V font could be used for setting up the U+EF01 character in a document: the font in which the text is displayed then all being changed to Sonnet to a Renaissance Lady. This is research using Private Use Area characters. If alternate glyph selectors work and provide benefits, then maybe a proposal to include them in regular Unicode can be prepared and submitted, perhaps with the suggestion that they be located in plane 10.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/AVISIBLE.TTF

The following thread may be of interest as well in relation to my idea for Alternate Glyph Selectors.

http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/200 ... priva.html

So, here is a chance for readers with access to InDesign to find out whether Alternate Glyph Selectors will work in InDesign.

Feedback would be appreciated please.

William Overington

23 March 2007

[William]

Some readers may have looked at the following thread, which is about my Stardisc font and mentions the database idea which it supports.

http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=1717

As I am interested in graphic design and ligatures, I have tried to design a logo for the database, partly in case it becomes implemented using the STARDISC name, partly because having a logo might help it become implemented with whatever name and partly because I like trying to design graphic art.

The present version is as follows.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/s ... go002b.gif

The design contains a capital AR ligature.

I have not seen an AR ligature previously, though someone somewhere might well have added one into a font previously. I did search for AR ligature at http://www.yahoo.com and am trying to follow up on some of the references.

I produced the gif file using Microsoft Paint. I started by setting the text STÆRDISC in Microsoft WordPad, in black, using the font Goudita SF, which is a font supplied by Serif with at least some, maybe all, versions of its PagePlus program.

http://www.serif.com/forum/ViewThread.asp?Thread=27413

In case anyone is trying out this exercise, some readers might like to know that Æ can be produced in Wordpad using Alt 0198.

I then did a Print Screen and a paste into Paint. Having cut out the STÆRDISC and produced a new graphic containing just that, I then carefully removed the E part of Æ and blended the R into it. I then reduced the space between the T and the AR ligature. I then made the spaces each side of the text equal and coloured the text blue.

I did, before producing the logo by that method, try making a local version of the font by making an AR ligature as a Private Use Area glyph and then using an Alt code to produce the graphic directly in WordPad. I was then thinking of trying to add kerning for the T and the AG glyph, though thinking that perhaps a TAG glyph in the Private Use Area might be an easier approach as I seem to remember that WordPad does not support kerning, though that may not be correct.

However, having produced a font named Goudita SF AR I found that the letters went thin, probably due to having lost the hinting, so I used the drawing method above so as to make progress on producing a logo design.

However, I am thinking that an AR ligature could be quite stylish in a font, particularly an OpenType font where it could be a discretionary ligature which would be added in automatically.

Capital letter ligatures of modern introduction seem to be growing in popularity. For example, in my second post in the http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=1654 thread there is a link to the character map of Palatino™ Sans Informal Com Ultra Light OpenType format. That character map has various ligatures available from the Private Use Area, including the following ligatures involving two capitals.

AT ET HE LL ND NE NN OO ST TH TT WH

So, whether my design helps the STARDISC project to become implemented I do not know, yet it has been fun designing it and producing it and thinking about it and around it in relation to ligatures of capitals.

William Overington

26 March 2007

[William]

On the matter of ligatures and fonts and how to make them available, some readers might be interested in the following.

Yesterday I was browsing at in the Font Lounge at the http://www.linotype.com webspace.

http://www.linotype.com/7/fontlounge.html

I followed the link to the Font Cloud.

http://www.linotype.com/fontcloud

I noticed a rather nice looking blackletter near the bottom of the page, clicked on it and studied the font for a while.

In writing this article today, upon not being able to find the font about which I am writing, I have realized that the Font Cloud presents samples of a different set of fonts when the page is refreshed.

Thus a direct link is here provided.

http://www.linotype.com/48406/linotypet ... -font.html

There is a character map.

http://www.linotype.com/35114391/linoty ... ermap.html

An interesting matter is that there are several long s ligatures mapped onto regular Unicode codepoints.

One can then follow a link to the following page.

http://www.linotype.com/1767/linotypetextur-family.html

One link then goes to the following page.

http://www.linotype.com/49116/linotypet ... -font.html

The character map link for the Linotype Textur™ Com Lombardisch font leads to the following page.

http://www.linotype.com/36844649/linoty ... ermap.html

There are various ligature glyphs available, including some mapped into the Private Use Area. Microsoft Calculator is started and E202 hexadecimal, because in this font U+E202 is used for a long s i ligature glyph, is found to be 57858 decimal.

Start WordPad, use Alt 57858 and a black rectangle appears. Nonetheless, highlight it and copy it onto the clipboard.

So, back to the following page.

http://www.linotype.com/49116/linotypet ... -font.html

Click on create sample, wondering which version of the font will be used.

Use CTRL V to paste the character into the text box and then click on Apply.

Wow, it works!

Going back to the following web page.

http://www.linotype.com/1767/linotypetextur-family.html

Another link from that page goes to the following page.

http://www.linotype.com/48410/linotypet ... -font.html

That font has a long s h ligature, which I did not notice in the following character map.

http://www.linotype.com/36844649/linoty ... ermap.html

I wonder if it is perhaps there yet not documented?

I feel that I should make the point that with the OpenType font one would expect the ligatures to be encoded for automatic glyph substitution, with the Private Use Area access to the glyphs just an additional access method for the benefit of people who do not have access to an OpenType-aware application or who maybe need to use a non-OpenType-aware application for a particular task. However, not having the font myself and anyway not having an OpenType aware application to use, I cannot try that.

I hope that this post is of interest. Maybe if it is and if one sees the font in the Font Cloud sometime, maybe the title of the font will be rather larger than when I saw it in the Font Cloud yesterday.

William Overington

31 March 2007

[William]

The following two pages about new fonts might be of interest to readers.

http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/200 ... _sans.html

http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2007/04/arno.html

There are links to the respective pages about the fonts.

The reason that I am mentioning them in this thread is that there are pdfs which have ligature glyphs yet where one can copy out the text and paste it into WordPad and the underlying text is copied across. This is what should happen yet I had not actually observed it in practice previously.

For example, the lowest line from the following pdf document.

http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/landi ... y_raja.pdf

For example, the lowest line of page 3 of the folowing document.

http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/landi ... ttings.pdf

I found it interesting, using Adobe Reader 7, to drag the mouse slowly across the text and notice how the selected section jumps across the whole of a ligature glyph. In order to do this one may first need to right-click and enable the "Allow Hand Tool to Select Text" option; this can be done by clicking on the words Allow Hand Tool to Select Text.

Some readers might like to compare and contrast that effect with the effect of selecting the ligatures in the following document which I produced using my new Herb Garden font, which font is not an OpenType font and the ligature glyphs are inserted into the document using Private Use Area codepoints.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/h ... enfont.pdf

It seems to be the same effect in the pdf at that stage. Yet copying and then pasting to WordPad does not copy the underlying text across, because the underlying text is not encoded in the pdf, it is just the visual display which looks right.

However, the font does have the artwork for the glyphs for the ligatures included. so maybe one day the Herb Garden font will be produced in an OpenType format.

Fonts with ligatures seem to be becoming very popular.

William Overington

18 April 2007

[William]

It is now almost two years since the previous post in this thread.

Yet now there has been a breakthrough.

Mozilla Firefox version 3.0.8 is being used to test the fonts.

viewtopic.php?p=11266#p11266

Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 is a free download.

William Overington

13 April 2009

[William]

Quoting myself from a post of 19 March 2007 10:42, earlier in this thread.

I have now produced the font and uploaded it to the web.

It is called 10000 Q and is available using the following link.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/10000Q.TTF

...

Automated ligature generation for fourteen ligatures. Of those fourteen ligatures, six look the same as the combination of the glyphs of the underlying characters, so no change should be noticed, yet they are included for completeness. They are ffi ffl ff fi ff and long s t. The other eight look different from the combination of the glyphs of the underlying characters. They are st ct ch ck et sh sk zy.

I have now tested the font, using Firefox 3.0.8, and it works well.

Here is a transcript of the html file. Please note the use of the ' character before and after the 10000 Q. It did not work without them. This may well be because the font name starts with a digit rather than a letter.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Test Ligatures</title>
</head>
<body>

<p style="text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; font-family: '10000 Q'; font-size: 40px;">
offer field flood official affluent &#383;tone distinctive actually choose lock between ash ask lazy
</p>

</body>
</html>

Here is a graphic.

An extract from a Print Screen image showing the ligatures being displayed by Firefox 3.0.8

ligatures10000.png (7.82 KiB) Viewed 4557 times

William Overington

13 April 2009

[William]

On Friday 23 March 2007 10:25 am I wrote in this thread as follows.

I have just added another experimental OpenType font to the web.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/SONNETQ.TTF

....

The font is named Sonnet to Renaissance Lady Q. It started as a copy of my Sonnet to a Renaissance Lady font. The a and a space were removed from the name so that adding space and Q at the end did not make the font name longer than 28 characters which I seem to think from somewhere in the back of my mind is the limit, though I am unsure as to whether that it the case, yet I took the precaution just in case.

Yesterday morning I wrote a poem and, thinking of publishing it, I thought that my Sonnet to a Renaissance Lady font might be a suitable choice of font.

I then remembered the Sonnet to Renaissance Lady Q font and decided to try setting the poem in an html page with a view to displaying it using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 and observing the effect of whatever ligatures were chosen for the display.

Here is a transcript of the apricots.htm html file.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Apricots poem</title>
</head>
<body>

<p style="text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; font-family: Sonnet to Renaissance Lady Q; font-size: 40px;">
The apricots grew beneath the same sun as the apples in an English orchard:
<br>
yet beneath different constellations of stars.
<br>
Food canning technology preserved them near where they grew.
<br>
Now they are enjoyed in England.
</p>

</body>
</html>

In order for the poem to be displayed by Firefox 3.0.8 as intended, the font Sonnet to Renaissance Lady Q needs to be installed on the local computer.

William Overington

21 April 2009

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

One more program now supports OpenType features — Serif™ PagePlus.

Serif Launch PPX5 (Launch date October 18th)

New and improved features include advanced OpenType font support for even more professional typography

This finally brings OpenType typography within the budget of home users. I am already adding more OpenType features to my free fonts — ordinals, ornaments, initial forms, etc. They're not quite ready for release yet.

[William]

One more program will now supports OpenType features — Serif™ PagePlus.

PagePlus X5 has been launched.

http://www.serif.com/

There is a pdf manual.

Pages 126 through to 129 are about OpenType fonts.

http://www.serif.com/community/pdfs/pageplusx5-uk.pdf

William Overington

18 October 2010