Alternate ligature glyphs

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William
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Alternate ligature glyphs

Post by William »

The following thread shows the basis of the problem.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index. ... apability/

The following thread is interesting background but probably not essential.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7815

A gentleman writing in the Affinity Publisher forum (there is a free-to-use beta version of the Affinity Publisher program available), whom I was not aware posted here (though I have now found him listed) advised me that I have not made the font correctly and that I should ask in this forum.

> Personally, I wouldn't use Salt for this. I also added the change from c_t to c_t.alt1 to the Access All Alternates feature and recompiled the font and it works with the "All Alternates" feature as well.

Does that mean both that salt can be used for this but my font is not correct, and also that aalt would be better?

I have a vague recollection that salt and aalt came up some years ago. There was also clig I seem to remember. I need to brush up on all of this.

Help would be appreciated please.

The present version of my font is attached.

William
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ligaalts.otf
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William
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Re: Alternate ligature glyphs

Post by William »

Well I searched for aalt and found some code that I had written some years ago.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4314&p=20480#p20458

Yet the next post in that thread advise me to use salt instead of aalt.

I clearly need to read up on it, because I have just tried to make a font using aalt instead of salt and that font does not work as desired either.

Yet MikeW has got it to work so hopefully with help I can get itto wrk as well.

William
Alfred
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Re: Alternate ligature glyphs

Post by Alfred »

For what it’s worth, John Hudson argues against the use of aalt in this post on TypeDrawers.
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MikeW
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Re: Alternate ligature glyphs

Post by MikeW »

Funnily enough, InDesign added the feature to access on-screen aalt later that same year. Just because John doesn't use it doesn't mean it isn't viable as is indicative of other responses. It is true that there is limited support for aalt across the spectrum of OT-aware applications. But this is true of many other OT Features as well. My main pet peeve is the Historical Forms feature that has limited support (3 applications support it as far as I know).

And then for more complicated features, actually processing more complex features is limited, even in ID. I've brow-beat two applications developers into support for these more complex features, but most will just say, Thank you for the idea and your continued support. Jeesh. I better stop before I go into a full-on rant...

One of the oft heard comments on TD and other sites is the lack of application support due to ignorance among users concerning the use OT features. I think it is mostly the other way round. It is apathy among application developers to build the features in. I think if it isn't in the applications, how the heck can users access those features to use them?
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