OpenType Features - Some Experiments in Using Them

Post questions about type and font design here.
Post Reply
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

OpenType Features - Some Experiments in Using Them

Post by William »

On the matter of OpenType and comparing and contrasting using OpenType glyph substitution and Private Use Area codepoint allocations for ligatures and alternate glyphs, some readers might perhaps like to have a look at the following thread.

viewtopic.php?t=1654

> Again, not a lot of point working to add OpenType feature support to FontCreator unless more applications support them.

Just my dreaming and musing, but it would be great if FontCreator and Serif PagePlus from Serif, at the http://www.serif.co.uk webspace, both went OpenType capable simultaneously. Two European products, both reasonable budget priced, used together with good OpenType facilities, would allow an amazing forward burst of creativity.

I use Serif PagePlus quite a lot, often using my own fonts, to produce pdf documents which I put on the web.

For example, the following, linked from the http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/library.htm web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/cooking.PDF

Also the following, linked from the http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/fonts.htm web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/housing.PDF

> My work around using the Private Use Area can be done with the current version of FontCreator and will work even in WordPad, though I have to agree that it is not ideal because special glyphs have to be manually selected and will be .notdef glyphs if used with other fonts.

Whilst recognizing that it is not ideal, I wonder if I may suggest that the situation is not perhaps as bad as compared with OpenType as it might be thought.

Firstly, regarding "special glyphs have to be manually selected and will be .notdef glyphs if used with other fonts", the problem can be reduced in severity in many cases when using FontCreator and the Private Use Area, because several fonts can use the same set of Private Use Area mappings. For example, several of my fonts include a ct ligature glyph, mapped to U+E707, which corresponds to Alt 59143 when used with WordPad. Setting some text in one of the fonts needs the Alt 59143 operation in order to get the glyph into WordPad, yet changing font does not need for it to be entered again.

For example, the following display of the word Actually using a ct ligature, which may well show with a black rectangle in this forum.

Aually

I keyed that in WordPad using my font Sonnet to a Renaissance Lady at 72 point. I then highlighted the text and changed the font to my 10000 font. The ct ligature is mapped to U+E707 in both fonts. Actually, in addition, the Sonnet to a Renaissance Lady font has an alternate ct ligature glyph at U+E427 which is Alt 58407. However, the 10000 font returns a .notdef glyph for that codepoint.

Readers who wish to use the U+E707 mapping in their own fonts for a ct ligature are welcome to do so. There is no charge or anything like that at all. There is a list of ligatures, still valid yet needing some additions, in the web pages introduced and indexed at the http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/golden.htm web page and some of them and some others are used in my fonts. In particular my Quest text and Chronicle Text fonts contain many ligatures including some additions.

In fairness, the only font other than my own of which I am aware that has a ct ligature at U+E707 at present is the Code2000 font of James Kass.

http://www.code2000.net/code2000_page.htm

Secondly, regarding "special glyphs have to be manually selected and will be .notdef glyphs if used with other fonts", I am wondering what happens with InDesign if one has, using an OpenType font, used alternate glyphs and one then changes the font to another OpenType font which also has an alternate glyph for the particular character being used. Does InDesign drop back to the basic glyph when the font is changed? Ligatures may be automatic, but what about variants of ligatures? Does anyone reading this thread have access to InDesign and some OpenType fonts with alternate characters who could perhaps try some experiments on this topic and post the results here please?

Some readers might like to have a look at the following thread.

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

At present I find that I have mixed feelings about Private Use Area mappings for ligatures and alternate glyphs.

It would be nice to be able to produce OpenType fonts with the ligature glyphs automatic and the alternate glyphs still keeping spell-checking and so on: yet that is not possible for me at present, due to both not having the facilities and not having the knowledge and skills.

Yet Private Use Area glyphs can be used now to produce displays, using reasonable budget software.

I do like the idea that, like a piece of metal type for a ligature being one piece of metal, there is a codepoint for a ligature glyph, as if they could be distributed in a type tray. Idea for a piece of art. A divided tray as in a type tray for handsetting metal type, with U+ expressions in the boxes, so that the e box has many copies of U+0065, the a box has not quite so many copies of U+0061 and the ct ligature box has just a few copies of U+E707 and so on. A six character U+ expression being somewhat like the shape of a piece of metal type, just to the extent of being long and thin.

Yet the unifying part of this is that producing fonts using Private Use Area code points for ligature glyphs and for alternates using FontCreator, is that the fonts are usable for producing displays now and that the artwork is stored in the font ready to be used for producing a fully functioning OpenType font if the opportunity arises in the future.

William Overington

8 March 2007
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by William »

Reading through my previous post I realize that the following link might also be helpful.

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

As I understand it, the renderer of a wordprocessing package which can handle glyph substitution for ligatures works, for each character in turn, down the table in relation to that character and the next few characters after it, stopping when it gets a substitution or when it gets to the end of the list and finds that no glyph substitution is needed for that character. Thus, in relation to the ligatures for ffi and ffl, I have placed them before ff in the list.

Suppose that the word office is being considered for glyph substitution. Firstly the system looks for ligatures starting with the letter o and finds none. The system then starts looking for ligatures starting with the letter f, finds ffi and realizes that this is a match for the current and next few characters of ffice, so uses that and then proceeds to look for ligatures starting with c, finds ct and realizes that this is not a match for ce (ce being from the remnants of office after o and ffi have been used up) and so does not use it, just using c.

I think that the system would then try to process e, even though it is at the end of the word because I think that it is possible, though I am not sure on the matter, to have a ligature of e and a space so as to have a swash e at the end of a word if one chooses to design a font in that way.

However, had the font had the ligature rule for ff before the ligature rule for ffi, when the system started looking for ligatures starting with the letter f, it would have found finds ff and would have realized that it was a match for the current and next character of ffice, so would have used that and then proceeded to look for ligatures starting with i and then having found none, then proceeded to look for ligatures starting with c and so on as before.

Now, as it happens, Chronicle Text has a number of these ordering matters regarding ligatures.

There is the cha che cho ch collection.

There is the ppe pp pe collection.

There are various long s long s something ligatures as well, and also various other ff something ligatures.

Incidentally, I found some of those ligatures in a pdf in the http://www.waldenfont.com/ webspace. On the http://www.waldenfont.com/product.asp?productID=2 web page there is a manual available in the Downloads section, http://www.waldenfont.com/downloads/gbpmanual.pdf and there is a table on page 14 of that manual.

Then there are my hypothetical metal type simulation ligatures, such as bi and so on, which I mentioned in the following thread.

viewtopic.php?t=1080

It might seem unnecessary to include them as ligature substitutions and it probably is unnecessary but I am probably likely to do it anyway as a sort of aesthetic completeness for the font.

Another interesting point is that the experimental font also still allows access to every ligature glyph using a Private Use Area codepoint: I am hoping to produce a fully working OpenType font with automatic glyph substitution yet I am keeping the Private Use Area codepoints as well.

William Overington

18 March 2007

Please note that some of the original text of this post has been deleted by the author and a later post produced on 19 March 2007: that later post is in this thread.
Last edited by William on Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by William »

Last Saturday afternoon, it is now early on Monday morning, I obtained a copy of VOLT and tried to produce an experimental OpenType version of my Chronicle Text font with some automated ligatures in it. Chronicle Text contains many ligatures and the experimental font contains automated ligation for only a few of them. I produced a font, then in a file named CHRONTXE.TTF which I thought was what I wanted. However, I had not completed the process and that file is but a stage in the process, a stage which would not normally be published. However, that file is now renamed CHRONTE0.TTF and published as viewing it as a text file using WordPad is interesting as to how the VOLT system works.

The tutorial starts at the following page.

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

The next page is as follows.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/dev ... sign_2.htm

The CHRONTE0.TTF file represents the situation after Stage 2 for the process as described on the following web page.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/dev ... sign_3.htm

Stages 3, 4 and 5 are about adding other OpenType features which are not about ligatures and those features are not added in this learning experiment.

The newly produced file CHRONTE1.TTF represents the situation after Stage 6 of the process as described on the following web page.

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

The newly produced file CHRONTXE.TTF represents the situation after my doing as much of Stage 7 of the process as described on the following web page as I can without having access to using the InDesign package.

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

Thus the CHRONTXE.TTF file is the one to use for tests using InDesign, CHRONTE0.TTF and CHRONTE1.TTF are supplied as information in case any reader finds them useful for study, either using WordPad or maybe using VOLT.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTE0.TTF

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTE1.TTF

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

The original Chronicle Text font is available on the web as follows.

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

If some readers find opening a font file as text using WordPad to be a problem, the thing to do is first to save the font file to local hard disc storage, then start WordPad, then use File Open... and then select the All Documents (*.*) choice from the Files of type: selection box.

This should allow the font file to be selected.

The information about the ligature substitutions is available in plain text form within the files CHRONTE0.TTF and CHRONTE1.TTF but not in the file CHRONTXE.TTF.

I started by loading Chronicle Text into FontCreator and producing Chronicle Text Experiments as a copy, just with a changed name and date.

Then, using VOLT, I altered the Chronicle Text Experiments font so as to produce what I hope is a font which will automatically display some ligature glyphs using InDesign or a similar OpenType aware application.

I have tried to add automatic ligature substitution for the following ligatures.

ffi ffl ff fi fl ct ba be bo

I have tried the font in WordPad to ensure that it still works as the original and that appears fine.

Yet I cannot test the font as to whether it can be used in an automated ligature producing manner using InDesign as I have not got access to InDesign, so I do not know whether the font works properly or not in regard to automatic ligature substitution within InDesign.

So, if anyone reading this does have access to InDesign and would be willing to test the font to observe whether it works as intended, then that would be appreciated please.

William Overington

19 March 2007
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by William »

Thank you for replying to my post.

> Is there really any point in spending time developing fonts with OpenType features, while there is still very limited support for them?

Well, from my standpoint, yes. I appreciate that some readers may have different opinions, yet that is part of the benefits of a democracy, we do not all have to have the same point of view and can have a society where people can have their own views yet respect that others can and do have different views.

So, in answering your question with yes I am not trying to convince anyone that I am right and anyone with a different view is wrong.

From my standpoint there are many advantages to learning how to produce OpenType fonts and trying to produce them.

Firstly, I am learning and keeping my mind active. I am improving in my knowledge as a typographer and font designer. Maybe someone reading this thread will have InDesign and try the font. Maybe he or she will post a note saying that it works. Maybe someone will post a pdf with the word actually in it using the font, using an automatically-added ct ligature so that those of us who so choose can view the pdf and then copy out the text onto the clipboard and paste it into WordPad so as hopefully to demonstrate that the ligature is displayed yet the underlying text is copyable, which it is not if the U+E707 codepoint is used to produce the display. This is not ground-breakingly new for the world of typography, yet for me it would feel like an achievement and maybe some other readers of this thread would enjoy trying that out.

Secondly, it might lead to something else. OpenType fonts tend to cost a bit and so a free font with OpenType facilities might become popular. Maybe a typography magazine will feature it. Maybe I might be invited to write an article for the magazine. Maybe a software package producer might ask if the font can be included on the CD for the software. Maybe some readers of this thread might be inspired to have a go producing OpenType fonts and maybe my posts will help them along that path. If it is just me producing OpenType fonts with automated ligature substitution in such a "forward pass" manner then there we are. Yet if lots of people, readers of this thread, do it then maybe Serif will add automated ligature display in PagePlus X3 and then things would really take off as Serif produces budget software and InDesign costs lots in the USA and have a look at what it costs in the UK!

Thirdly, in trying to get up to the level which others have already achieved I might notice something new and be able to put forward a sparklingly new idea which will cause great advantage.

I am at present part-way through trying to produce an OpenType version of my 10000 font. The font is called 10000 Q and will hopefully have automated glyph substitution for fourteen ligatures. I am using the 10000 font as it has glyphs for some ligatures yet not as for as many as has the Chronicle Text font.

Yet I appreciate that at present I do not know if the Chronicle Text Experiments font will work in InDesign, though it worked well using the Proofing Tool in VOLT, so I am hopeful.

William
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by William »

In my previous post I wrote as follows.

> I am at present part-way through trying to produce an OpenType version of my 10000 font. The font is called 10000 Q and will hopefully have automated glyph substitution for fourteen ligatures.

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

I have not been able to test it in InDesign though I have used the Proofing Tool in VOLT on a selection of the glyph substitutions.

If it works satisfactorily in InDesign it would have the following facilities.

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.

So, if anyone has access to InDesign and could try the font out please that would be appreciated.

William
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by William »

I remembered something and found the following thread.

viewtopic.php?t=1138

So can Tuffy now go OpenType with automated ligature generation?

William
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

OpenType Features - How Many Programs Support Them?

Post by 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
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by 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
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by 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.

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
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by William »

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

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 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
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by 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
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Post by 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
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Re: OpenType Features - How Many Programs Support Them?

Post by 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
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

OpenType Features - How Many Programs Support Them?

Post by William »

Quoting myself from a post of 19 March 2007 10:42, earlier in this thread.
William wrote: 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
An extract from a Print Screen image showing the ligatures being displayed by Firefox 3.0.8
ligatures10000.png (7.82 KiB) Viewed 21132 times
William Overington

13 April 2009
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Re: OpenType Features - How Many Programs Support Them?

Post by William »

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