[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Just like the aforementioned Adobe Caslon Alt Regular font does -- it puts the "ct" lig in the "c" slot.

Which is exactly why it is not "correct" either

I just fired up my word processor and tried it, and it doesn't seem to (i.e. change "ct" to the lig, just by typing "ct"). However, that font has a lot more ligs than most fonts do: ct, st, sh, fi, ss, ffi and ff; and the italic has those plus is, sl, ll, as well as an alternate v.

It doesn't matter how many ligatures, all the font needs is some instruction saying "when these characters appear together, display this other glyph". For alternate forms and other fancy stuff, there are OpenType features... but those are usually rather poorly supported, and are more complex to use correctly.

In any case, though, correct me if I'm wrong, but your only point in stressing that the font should use "legitimate" slots for where it puts the ligs is so that the text can be searchable and stuff, right? I mean, what other reason matters?

Searchable and readable if the font is not used or available (for whatever reason). And all this began because you were complaining (among other things) of your words breaking between lines without a hyphen, which would not happen if the reading software knew that those ligatures are normal letters and not weird symbols.

And it would be easier for you to edit the book, and it would be possible to copy-paste, etc.

The problem is not the font per se, but the fact that, in order to use the font as you want, you have to alter the text in such as way that it is only readable with this particular font. If you are fine with that, go on, no policeman will be knocking at your door, but you should be aware of the possible problems.

It works just fine, and visually looks just fine -- the only issue might be readability and searchability. Well, in both those regards, that's virtually irrelevant: the text that it's displaying isn't modern English, but late-Middle English. Who would be doing a "search" within that (unless they're some prof or something who knows the language -- and all the insane variants of spelling, etc. -- from that time)?

Do not assume that "nobody will want to search", or "no one will ever copy paste that", or "no sane person would use a text-to-speech with this". The world is full of weird people

So while I do understand your point about this font set -- and how it would most definitely apply to, say, the first half of my book (in modern English) or any other "regular" book I might create -- I'm at a bit of a loss as to what exactly the issue might be in this particular case, with what I'm trying to accomplish here.

Not a real issue, I was simply calling your attention on this particular problem, it's up to you to decide whether it's important enough for you.

That, and the nitpicker in me wanting the world to be perfect

If the font license permits it, I'm willing to have a go at "fixing" it... I might even use it myself (check the Gulliver PDF if you don't believe it).