Contextual Alternates Help

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1

Hey all, I’m a brand new typeface designer, and I’m almost finished with my first font! Everything has gone pretty smoothly for me up until this point. I created .end alternates for all of my characters to be replaced at the end of words, and just a few .init characters (for r, s, and l), and they work beautifully. However, I can not get the few ligatures I created to work in the same way (t_h.liga → t_h.end) (l_l.liga → l_l.init). I feel like there’s a simple solution to this that I’m overlooking, but I’ve been circling around this issue for a few hours and haven’t gotten anywhere. :confused: I’ve attached a screenshot of the OpenType designer to help show what I’m wanting to achieve. Can anyone help?

Thanks!

Stargazer - Contextual Alternates.png
Stargazer with.png
Stargazer with2.png
And for fun, I wanted to show this screenshot because this is a culmination of many hours (couple of months) I’ve put into this font and it’s FINALLY coming together. :slight_smile:
Stargazer - Name Preview.png

2

You can see you’ve put a lot of effort and thought into this font.

I think the issue can be solved by reordering the lookups, as it seems you want to first apply the ligature, and then the substitute. In the left tree, select the Endings lookup within the “lookups” category, and then click the Down Arrow toolbar icon a couple of times, until it is right below the Ligature.

Let us know if this helps.

3

Thank you, so much!

I reordered the lookups, and it didn’t solve the problem, BUT I figured out a solution! So, hopefully, this saves others hours of frustration. I kept all of the simple, single-glyph, alternate endings and initial forms under the contextual alternates - chaining context subtable, and I deleted the rest. I added my special 2-glyph endings and initial forms as standard ligatures as shown, and they all work like a charm!

INPUT: t h.end
OUTPUT: t_h.end
Stargazer - Solution.png
Stargazer - Solution2.png
Thank you, for taking time to address my problem. I was driving myself crazy trying to figure this out, and it ended up being so simple. Hopefully, I’ll get this font released in the next few days or so! :slight_smile:

Shannyn

4

Congratulations . . . you have crafted a very fine font here. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses::ok_hand:

5

Thank you, so much!