5 ms·

How on earth does this work?!

Splines 9y ago
I am a complete font newbie, but looking at the standard (https://www.iso.org/standard/66391.html https://www.iso.org/standard/66391.html), it seems like there exists a feature called "contextual glyphs", which means you can supply alternative glyphs (like ligatures) given a particular sequence of glyphs. I imagine you could crack open the font file itself and find out how this works - I'm not familiar with any of the tools to do this though. Here's (I think) more detail: https://fontforge.github.io/editexample6-5.html https://fontforge.github.io/editexample6-5.html
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  Just open any TTF or OTF up in FontForge (free software) and have a look! Look under Element » Font Info, and then Lookups. All tables under GSUB deal with glyph substitution. The liga table is the simplest, and it can be used to replace a ligature like 'fl' with a glyph that combines the two letter forms.
  - igravious 9y ago
    I can imagine many an hour lost down that rabbit hole :)
rhencke 9y ago
Font ligatures! Certain special combinations of characters can be treated by a font as having a special rendering known as a ligature. In CSS3, rendering of these is controlled through the 'font-variant-ligatures' property: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-variant-ligatures https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-varian... For a small example of text with and without ligatures for the common 'fi' and 'fl' combinations: https://codepen.io/anon/pen/MvbPdo?editors=1000#0 https://codepen.io/anon/pen/MvbPdo?editors=1000#0
- igravious 9y ago
  Super duper. I thought that it only worked for two-letter combos. Very cool Mozilla, or should I say Moz://a !
  - k__ 9y ago
    Yes, pretty smart trick, now they get their logo integrated easily in many apps. I use Fira Code for coding, ligatures are really nice.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
JoshTriplett 9y ago
See https://pixelambacht.nl/2015/sans-bullshit-sans/ https://pixelambacht.nl/2015/sans-bullshit-sans/ for more information on creating a font with ligatures.

I am a complete font newbie, but looking at the standard (https://www.iso.org/standard/66391.html https://www.iso.org/standard/66391.html), it seems like there exists a feature called "contextual glyphs", which means you can supply alternative glyphs (like ligatures) given a particular sequence of glyphs. I imagine you could crack open the font file itself and find out how this works - I'm not familiar with any of the tools to do this though. Here's (I think) more detail: https://fontforge.github.io/editexample6-5.html https://fontforge.github.io/editexample6-5.html

Freak_NL 9y ago
Just open any TTF or OTF up in FontForge (free software) and have a look! Look under Element » Font Info, and then Lookups. All tables under GSUB deal with glyph substitution. The liga table is the simplest, and it can be used to replace a ligature like 'fl' with a glyph that combines the two letter forms.
- igravious 9y ago
  I can imagine many an hour lost down that rabbit hole :)

rhencke 9y ago

Font ligatures! Certain special combinations of characters can be treated by a font as having a special rendering known as a ligature. In CSS3, rendering of these is controlled through the 'font-variant-ligatures' property: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-variant-ligatures https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-varian... For a small example of text with and without ligatures for the common 'fi' and 'fl' combinations: https://codepen.io/anon/pen/MvbPdo?editors=1000#0 https://codepen.io/anon/pen/MvbPdo?editors=1000#0

igravious 9y ago
Super duper. I thought that it only worked for two-letter combos. Very cool Mozilla, or should I say Moz://a !
- k__ 9y ago
  Yes, pretty smart trick, now they get their logo integrated easily in many apps. I use Fira Code for coding, ligatures are really nice.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

JoshTriplett 9y ago

See https://pixelambacht.nl/2015/sans-bullshit-sans/ https://pixelambacht.nl/2015/sans-bullshit-sans/ for more information on creating a font with ligatures.