Comments on: Ligatures

By: JC

JC — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:36:54 +0000

A NOVEL USE OF LIGATURES
========================
Firefox 3.0 and the beta version of Thunderbird (Shredder) allow display of ligatures. The ligatures accessed by looking up tables stored inside fonts.

Firefox allows the CSS command
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
To force the browser/email reader to go pick up the ligatures and display them.

Most of the text in the above web site is romanized Sinhala. However, if you install the special orthographic font, Sumangala at
http://www.americansmartfonts.com/download/Suriyakumara.ttf

it turns the Latin characters into complex Sinhala letters. You MUST use Firefox to see the ‘liagaturized’ romanized Sinhala.

By: Ruffle, muffle, kerfuffle, shuffle, snuffle, effluvium, soufflé… « On my commute

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:58:34 +0000

[…] thought about words that use ffl ligatures (inspired by this fine set of trading cards at Bazaar Bizarre yesterday) & pondered what […]

By: Walter

Walter — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 06:21:00 +0000

The Duden (German orthography “bible”) clearly prohibits ligatures across composition boundaries. Sauerstoffflasche has to be written with a ff and then separately fl ligature.

Sorry, no need for a fffl-ligature, at least not in German.

By: Bhikkhu Pesala

Bhikkhu Pesala — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 06:20:00 +0000

Apart from the common ligatures like ff, fi, fl, and a few other Alphabetic Presentation forms, most other ligatures are not assigned a code-point in the Unicode system. You have to design them in a font editor like FontCreator or FontLab and assign them to the Private Use Area. Then, to type them you need to assign shortcut keys or create autocorrect entries.

By: Tom Flowers

Tom Flowers — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:41:00 +0000

In reading old texts, I often come across the ligature AR. How does one create this ligature on the computer via unicode?

By: Theodore Rosendorf

Theodore Rosendorf — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 11:41:00 +0000

The letter aesc (æ, Æ) is a ligature used in Danish, Norwegian, and Anglo-Saxon, representing the Swedish ä. In English, it represents the Greek αι (alpha iota).

Theoretically, you could create any ligature you want and the public would judge its usefulness.

Mrs. Eaves is a good example of a face with extra decorative ligatures.

By: Cameron

Cameron — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 14:40:00 +0000

I understand that there is a fairly common AE ligature. So therefore it should make sense to have an AF or AL ligature right?

By: Theodore Rosendorf

Theodore Rosendorf — Tue, 16 May 2006 11:31:00 +0000

Okay, I see what you mean.

Some pairs will require more space. Some less.

In some cases you may want to alter the letterforms to fit together as one.

I see you’re very close.

By: Bhikkhu Pesala

Bhikkhu Pesala — Fri, 12 May 2006 12:25:00 +0000

I fixed the ligatures for Verajja, my version of Bitstream Vera. If the image code works you can see the results below. First plain text, then Verajja with ligatures, then DejaVu with ligatures.

Let me know what you think.

By: Theodore Rosendorf

Theodore Rosendorf — Thu, 11 May 2006 12:27:00 +0000

A well designed face provides correctly spaced ligatures. Standard ligatures (fi, fl, ff, ffi, and ffl letter combinations) in roman faces accommodate the kerns of the letter (f) so the arm of the f won't collide haphazardly, but connect elegantly with the letter following it.

I'd say yes. And if it looks awkward—disturbing the rhythm—it's off.

By: Bhikkhu Pesala

Bhikkhu Pesala — Thu, 11 May 2006 09:54:00 +0000

Should the spacing of ligatures be identical to the spacing of regular text? I have seen some bold f-ligatures (in the DejaVu Bold and Bold Italic Sans Font) that are more tightly kerned than plain text.

That is, should:

Difficult, and

Di?cult always be the same width?

I think that would be better in most cases, otherwise tracking (and hence pagination) would be affected by the use of ligatures.

By: Theodore Rosendorf

Theodore Rosendorf — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 10:52:00 +0000

> Any idea as to what their original purpose was? Purely cosmetic, or
> something more utilitarian?

Ligatures were invented for utilitarian and cosmetic purposes. Back in the days of lead type, they were used to save space for copy fitting, and save time setting type. Ligature letter pairs (fl, fi, etc.) occur frequently in text, so you can imagine the convenience of setting one instead of two or three blocks.

For cosmetics, ligatures are (should be) designed to support a font's style. Below is an example of how the 'fi' ligature in Adobe Caslon better suits its font's style than the clumsy f and i pair. The ligature is on the right.

By: Kristopher Cargile

Kristopher Cargile — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 18:35:00 +0000

Any idea as to what their original purpose was? Purely cosmetic, or something more utilitarian?

By: Theodore Rosendorf

Theodore Rosendorf — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 19:30:00 +0000

> 'funny mistakes'

Funny indeed!
I hope they didn't continue to explain how to correctly spell the word office...

I may update this post to ask how ligatures might affect legibility in text.

By: Avi Bercovich

Avi Bercovich — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 02:56:00 +0000

not very many I'm afraid... I just had an otherwise very capable office manager get back to me about the 'funny mistakes' in the word 'office'.

;)

By: Muffy

Muffy — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 17:24:00 +0000

I wonder how many lay-persons [non-designers, etc.] are even aware of their existence…