old english ligatures

bobcdy · 08-25-2011, 08:51 PM

I'm looking for a font for use with Adobe DE that has the old English liqatures such as 'ct' ligature. I have several fonts that has this character and other related ones, but none seem to work with ADE. All I get is a '?' with ADE, although with most of the fonts the other gyphs show up correctly.

If anyone knows of such a font, or why the ligatures don't work for a font whose other non-ligature characters work fine, I'd really appreciate your help.

Jellby · 08-26-2011, 04:28 AM

You need:

a) A font with the ligatures properly defined.

b) A reader which can use ligatures defined in fonts. I believe the latest ADE version (preview?) can.

Otherwise, the text does not need anything special, just write "action" and "office" with 6 letters each, the "ct" and "ffi" ligatures should be automatically used. Unicode has slots defined for some ligatures... do not use them, just rely on the font.

In my Orizon reader, with the Minion Pro font I can see the ligatures in "fi" and "fj", and I bet I would see "ct" and "st" if they were defined in the font. This font claims to have many ligatures, maybe not exactly the ones you want, but I guess you can use it to test if the reader is using the ligatures.

DSpider · 08-26-2011, 11:27 AM

I don't know much about this old stuff, but I'd probably use Unicode slots for those special characters...

For modifying fonts that don't have them or have them in various other slots (and it's probably why you see them marked as "?") you could try TypeTool 3 on Windows or FontForge on Linux, although FontForge can also run on Windows... The cleanest way would probably be running a LiveCD Linux distribution (eg. Ubuntu) using VirtualBox and just install it from the included Synaptic package manager. But it can also be done with Cygwin (if you don't mind some 35.000 files install). I ran it back in 2009 or so (see the screenshots): http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/....php?f=3&t=194

bobcdy · 08-26-2011, 05:18 PM

I had already tried everything and more as Jellby suggested, BUT I was using ADE v1.72.1131. When I switched to v8 preview, all worked perfectly (well not quite, because some of the fonts I tried had the ligatures in the wrong place or otherwise have something wrong with glyph properties because only some of their ligatures showed correctly in ADE preview).

Thanks for the heads-up about the preview.

08-25-2011, 08:51 PM	#1
bobcdy Fanatic Posts: 527 Karma: 1048576 Join Date: May 2009 Device: bebook; prs-950; nook simple touch; HTC Jetstream tablet	old english ligatures I'm looking for a font for use with Adobe DE that has the old English liqatures such as 'ct' ligature. I have several fonts that has this character and other related ones, but none seem to work with ADE. All I get is a '?' with ADE, although with most of the fonts the other gyphs show up correctly. If anyone knows of such a font, or why the ligatures don't work for a font whose other non-ligature characters work fine, I'd really appreciate your help.

08-26-2011, 11:27 AM	#3
DSpider Evangelist Posts: 450 Karma: 343115 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Romania Device: PW2 2014	I don't know much about this old stuff, but I'd probably use Unicode slots for those special characters... For modifying fonts that don't have them or have them in various other slots (and it's probably why you see them marked as "?") you could try TypeTool 3 on Windows or FontForge on Linux, although FontForge can also run on Windows... The cleanest way would probably be running a LiveCD Linux distribution (eg. Ubuntu) using VirtualBox and just install it from the included Synaptic package manager. But it can also be done with Cygwin (if you don't mind some 35.000 files install). I ran it back in 2009 or so (see the screenshots): http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/....php?f=3&t=194 Last edited by DSpider; 08-26-2011 at 11:30 AM.

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08-26-2011, 04:28 AM	#2
Jellby frumious Bandersnatch Posts: 7,515 Karma: 18512745 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Spaniard in Sweden Device: Cybook Orizon, Kobo Aura	You need: a) A font with the ligatures properly defined. b) A reader which can use ligatures defined in fonts. I believe the latest ADE version (preview?) can. Otherwise, the text does not need anything special, just write "action" and "office" with 6 letters each, the "ct" and "ffi" ligatures should be automatically used. Unicode has slots defined for some ligatures... do not use them, just rely on the font. In my Orizon reader, with the Minion Pro font I can see the ligatures in "fi" and "fj", and I bet I would see "ct" and "st" if they were defined in the font. This font claims to have many ligatures, maybe not exactly the ones you want, but I guess you can use it to test if the reader is using the ligatures.

08-26-2011, 05:18 PM	#4
bobcdy Fanatic Posts: 527 Karma: 1048576 Join Date: May 2009 Device: bebook; prs-950; nook simple touch; HTC Jetstream tablet	I had already tried everything and more as Jellby suggested, BUT I was using ADE v1.72.1131. When I switched to v8 preview, all worked perfectly (well not quite, because some of the fonts I tried had the ligatures in the wrong place or otherwise have something wrong with glyph properties because only some of their ligatures showed correctly in ADE preview). Thanks for the heads-up about the preview.

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