6 ms·

I don't really understand why he used ligatures (or why he called these web font icons 'Ligature Symbols'). Surely if you are going to be substituting letters f

I don't really understand why he used ligatures (or why he called these web font icons 'Ligature Symbols'). Surely if you are going to be substituting letters for icons, you may as well use easily accessible, memorable and slightly semantic keyboard characters (eg: B and I for bold and italic, S for save, X for cut).

mooism2 14y ago
They are all codepoints from the private use area (U+E000-U+F8FF), so they don't conflict with any standardised characters. I'd speculate that someone's released a font of ligatures that uses the PUA, so this person thinks that's what the PUA is called.
- pgeorgi 14y ago
  The font also matches the strings: type "file" in this font, and you get the "file" icon (etc). Try to copy & paste some of the icons on the page, or look at the source. Clever, but I don't know if I consider that a good idea.
  - thristian 14y ago
    It's an excellent idea, because if the font fails to load you get an actual human-readable fallback, instead of "whatever some random other font put in the PUA". For example, whenever I visit GitHub I find the interface decorated with random Korean glyphs and 7-segment-LCD symbols, which is somewhat distracting and confusing. With a ligature system like this, I'd see things like "file" and "folder" which at least make sense.
    - zachinglis 14y ago
      Except they only-sort-of match the text. Like using 'in' instead of login. It all depends on usage. If you're using it next to text, then getting "Login Login" is annoying. If you're using icons only (which has debatable standards), then yes.
    - vacri 14y ago
      What are the benefits of having to supply a custom font instead of a custom icon? edit: looking at it more closely, you'd have to specify the font just for the icon you want to use - if you used it for text, the ligatures would screw you up in short order. Try typing the word 'tileset' or 'padlock' in the box, for example. So if you're going to specify a font only for icons... why not just use the icon image alt text for screenreaders? (as suggested below) A cute idea, but not sure of the pragmatic applications.
  - ZoFreX 14y ago
    It's not the only symbol font that does this, and I like it - it provides a decent fallback if the font fails to load or isn't supported in your browser, and the symbols will be readable to screen readers.
178 14y ago
Not to mention it seems plain wrong. These are icons, not ligatures.
- 178 14y ago
  After careful consideration and reading the page again, I retract everything I said and claim the opposite. The use of ligatures for icons is ingenious!
darklajid 14y ago
I quite like the idea. People complaining that there's nothing 'ligature' about the font seem to be too harsh / don't like this particular take on the subject. "In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph." (Wikipedia) I consider the (ab)use of ligatures a clever term for the font, considering that it _does_ something related (replacing the text 'file' with a file icon/symbol). I also actually prefer the idea of having actual, meaningful words (which I consider accessible and memorable, much more than any abbreviation) in the source. No idea if this is useful in the wild, but the hack is clever and interesting. Why shoot it down?
sakai 14y ago
I rather like this too, as they degrade gracefully. It's quite elegant. Does anybody know what support exists (or is required) for ligatures across common browsers?

mooism2 14y ago

They are all codepoints from the private use area (U+E000-U+F8FF), so they don't conflict with any standardised characters. I'd speculate that someone's released a font of ligatures that uses the PUA, so this person thinks that's what the PUA is called.

pgeorgi 14y ago
The font also matches the strings: type "file" in this font, and you get the "file" icon (etc). Try to copy & paste some of the icons on the page, or look at the source. Clever, but I don't know if I consider that a good idea.
- thristian 14y ago
  It's an excellent idea, because if the font fails to load you get an actual human-readable fallback, instead of "whatever some random other font put in the PUA". For example, whenever I visit GitHub I find the interface decorated with random Korean glyphs and 7-segment-LCD symbols, which is somewhat distracting and confusing. With a ligature system like this, I'd see things like "file" and "folder" which at least make sense.
  - zachinglis 14y ago
    Except they only-sort-of match the text. Like using 'in' instead of login. It all depends on usage. If you're using it next to text, then getting "Login Login" is annoying. If you're using icons only (which has debatable standards), then yes.
  - vacri 14y ago
    What are the benefits of having to supply a custom font instead of a custom icon? edit: looking at it more closely, you'd have to specify the font just for the icon you want to use - if you used it for text, the ligatures would screw you up in short order. Try typing the word 'tileset' or 'padlock' in the box, for example. So if you're going to specify a font only for icons... why not just use the icon image alt text for screenreaders? (as suggested below) A cute idea, but not sure of the pragmatic applications.
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  It's not the only symbol font that does this, and I like it - it provides a decent fallback if the font fails to load or isn't supported in your browser, and the symbols will be readable to screen readers.

178 14y ago

Not to mention it seems plain wrong. These are icons, not ligatures.

178 14y ago
After careful consideration and reading the page again, I retract everything I said and claim the opposite. The use of ligatures for icons is ingenious!

darklajid 14y ago

I quite like the idea. People complaining that there's nothing 'ligature' about the font seem to be too harsh / don't like this particular take on the subject. "In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph." (Wikipedia) I consider the (ab)use of ligatures a clever term for the font, considering that it _does_ something related (replacing the text 'file' with a file icon/symbol). I also actually prefer the idea of having actual, meaningful words (which I consider accessible and memorable, much more than any abbreviation) in the source. No idea if this is useful in the wild, but the hack is clever and interesting. Why shoot it down?

sakai 14y ago

I rather like this too, as they degrade gracefully. It's quite elegant. Does anybody know what support exists (or is required) for ligatures across common browsers?