Ligature love?

[Atunah]

Originally Posted by rkomar

The dot is there, right on the end of the downward curving part of the 'f'. But that's just for that font. Others make the dot separate. It's up to the font creator how it looks.

Like I said, I use that same font in the example and my dot is separate, so I am still confused. But to be honest, I haven't heard about this before and I been reading books for a very long time. So I had to actually look on my kindle to see what I see. So as long as I am immersed in my books, I guess I don't care. But I do have a dot on my kindle with that font. I can try the other serif fonts to see. I can't read with non serif.

This is so weird. Its gonna make me pull out paper books from my shelf now. Are there "i" dots in my paper books? Yikes.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

That would have been a more interesting thread!

As the OP, I'm inclined to agree

[MarjaE]

If these combinations are treated as new letters, they may not display properly, and will not search properly. I don't think it's worth it.

On the other hand I often need þ and ƕ.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

If these combinations are treated as new letters, they may not display properly, and will not search properly. I don't think it's worth it.

On the other hand I often need þ and ƕ.

Fi, ff, etc shouldn't be treated as new letters. As I understand it the font is just telling the engine "hey if these two are near each other display this instead", the underlying letters are still the same.

þ and ƕ may only come up in a search for þ or ƕ I don't run into those ligatures so I can't say.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

On the other hand I often need þ and ƕ.

Is "þ " a ligature, though? Hasn't it always been a single character, not derived from the combining of two or more other characters? I itch to describe this as a thorny question, but I know that's a whole nother cup of t

[Gardenman]

Originally Posted by jhowell

On e-ink Kindles ligatures are used in books that have Enhanced Typesetting. Here is an example from my Kindle Oasis with the Bookerly font.

I would have thought it was a mistake in the making of the book.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Atunah

Thank you for that example. That looks horrific to me.

Horrific?

I don't know about enhanced, but I am not sure I remember any missing dots on my "i's". That is just wrong.

I don't want a missing dot, what the heck.

It's not 'missing', it's just merged. I think the overlapping hook on the lower case 'f' and the dot on the 'i' (as shown in post #7) looks ugly. The overlapping 'fl' does too, but less so.

Originally Posted by Atunah

Its gonna make me pull out paper books from my shelf now. Are there "i" dots in my paper books? Yikes.

How funny, I did the same yesterday, though I already knew the answer.

Every paperback I checked had them. They should. Ligatures are part of good quality typesetting.

[Quoth]

This is more about ligatures as a typesetting artefact of kerning very tight character spacing

https://xkcd.com/1015/

If you hate someone, teach them to recognise bad Kerning.

I earlier was writing about ligatures that are part of spelling or calligraphy style. If you notice typesetting ligatures, rather than author generated ligatures, that are the result of kerning with small letter spacing then either they are badly done or the character spacing is too tight.
Any font face at a particular size and resolution has a minimum spacing for readability. There is a maximum spacing for readability. Note these spacings are related to the visible size of the lettering. Lower resolution printing limits the minimum spacing.

I read one and a half ebooks since I wrote my original piece. I didn't see any of these typesetting kerning induced ligatures. I guess the Georgia embedded in the epubs converted by Calibre aren't doing the very tight spacing that needs 'f*' ligatures.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Fi, ff, etc shouldn't be treated as new letters. As I understand it the font is just telling the engine "hey if these two are near each other display this instead", the underlying letters are still the same.

Yes.

Some fancy programming tools now use Ligatures instead of != or whatever, it's horrid.

Originally Posted by MGlitch

þ and ƕ may only come up in a search for þ or ƕ I don't run into those ligatures so I can't say.

þ is not a ligature it's a distinct letter. Nor is ð or ø.
& started as the ligature version of et, but is a distinct letter ages ago, English kids used to place it after z. Indeed ø isn't a special version of o, like ó or ò, it's placed after z, though sometimes ö represents ø and in some languages the ö is an accented o, not an extra letter.
œ and æ are technically ligatures, but unlike fi and fl etc they are not due to kerning tight letter spacing. They represent letters not in the Latin-Roman alphabet, so shouldn't be artificially created by rendering on screen or paper.

BTW, these are all really easy to type on Linux using either AltGr<letter> or the old Compose<letter letter>. I have the Compose key mapped to CapsLock and hitting both Shift Keys is CapsLock, either unlocks.
If you have an ancient keyboard were RightAlt is never AltGr, then Ctrl Alt = AltGr (Try US International Keyboard in Windows if you have a US keyboard).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by shalym

I think I just figured out why I'm having such a hard time with this. I checked all three of the sans serif fonts on my Kindle in a book with enhanced formatting. *none* of them use ligatures, as far as I can tell--in the words "fine" "fields" and "file" there is a definite dot over the i. When I look at the same book using a serif font, the dot over the i disappears.

Since I only read using sans serif fonts, I wouldn't see any ligatures even if the book was formatted to use them. I wonder if this is also true on the Kobo? Of course, on the Kobo, I only read in Kepub format, so I wouldn't see them there, either.

Shari

In the configuration options for the Kob TouchExtended driver, under the extended tab, check Enable Extended Kobo Features to enable ligatures.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

It's not the book that is formatted to use ligatures (well, maybe it is on the Kindle. They do weird things there). Ligatures is a combination of the layout engine and the font being used.

The font needs to include ligatures and the engine has to be able to display them.

So on Kobo, kepubs have ligatures turned off by default. You can turn on ligatures using a patch.

Even if you enable ligatures, the font you use needs to include them. Georgia on my Nook includes ligatures. Georgia on the Kobo is a smaller subset and it does not include ligatures.

Literata Book and Bookerly both include various ligatures.

You could use the Windows Georgia and as long as you rename the files to the long form font naming and then put them in the fonts directory. That would then use that version of Georgia instead which has ligatures.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

That would have been a more interesting thread!

Would you have posted photos?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You could use the Windows Georgia and as long as you rename the files to the long form font naming and then put them in the fonts directory. That would then use that version of Georgia instead which has ligatures.

I tried that and it didn't seem to work, though I did it using my work PC, so I didn't check them on Font Forge or anything.

In the end, I like Georgia, but I also like Literata Book and that one works just fine.

On my Nook, Georgia has ligatures, which is good since you can't add fonts to a Nook.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

In the configuration options for the Kob TouchExtended driver, under the extended tab, check Enable Extended Kobo Features to enable ligatures.

No thank you...from what I've seen, I'd rather not have them in my ebook.

Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Shari

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by shalym

No thank you...from what I've seen, I'd rather not have them in my ebook.

Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Shari

Those two ligatures with the flourishes are not in most fonts. And not in Georgia. Just the ones that start with f such as fi, fl, ff, etc. So you don't have to worry about getting any annoying ligatures with Georgia. They are just being used to scare some away from ligatures.