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Sample Pane and Preview always use ligatures if available [Closed]

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2016 12:51 am
by nabsltd
In MainType 7.0.0, the Sample Pane replaces regular characters with ligatures if the font defines them. I assume it also displays using kerning, but that is harder to check. Although this is a nice feature, it won't always show exactly what other applications will display when the font is used in them, so it kind of breaks the "Sample" functionality. I discovered a font that had incorrectly defined the "fl" and "fi" ligatures, and it only showed up in the MainType Sample Pane, because other apps just used the normal two-character versions.

It would be nice to have checkboxes to enable/disable features like kerning, ligatures, and alternate forms, like the FontCreator preview pane has.

Re: Sample Pane and Preview always use ligatures if available

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2016 5:46 am
by Bhikkhu Pesala
This is a "Windows" thing.

Standard Ligatures (liga)

UI suggestion: This feature serves a critical function in some contexts, and should be active by default.

If you don't see ligatures in some applications, then they don't support OpenType features.

I don't see this as a bug. An option to disable the default OpenType features might be useful.

Re: Sample Pane and Preview always use ligatures if available

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2016 2:48 pm
by MikeW
Yes, a misuse of unicode positions in a font isn't a bug in the application.

But I too vote for the option to not use MS' recommendations for what features an application has turned on or not. MS hasn't thought through how fonts are used completely--nor have they specified which scripts (dflt, latn, etc) ought to have these features automatically turned on for.

Mike

Re: Sample Pane and Preview always use ligatures if available

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2016 7:27 pm
by nabsltd
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:If you don't see ligatures in some applications, then they don't support OpenType features.
Microsoft Office up to 2007 doesn't support OpenType features at all. Office 2010 was the first version to support it, and it still defaults to not using any features at all...you have to manually change your styling to get them. LibreOffice also does not support them on Windows. Internet Explorer 11 does not enable them by default (OTOH, Firefox 43 does enable them by default, but they can be disabled using about:config). Windows XP has no support for OpenType features. That pretty much means that 99% of text that anybody sees doesn't have OpenType features, so having them enabled as the default in MainType isn't ideal.

After testing, MainType uses the "Default" OpenType features encoded in the font.