Font Ligature Issues

[Psymon]

Hey, everybody!

I've been working on rather an ambitious project over these last months, having wanted to do up as an ebook a 16th century "magical" text, while at the same time creating a brand-new font (based on that original source document) to go along with it.

Being an old-style font like that (blackletter) -- not to mention an old-style book, too -- it's full of the long "s" character throughout, and the font needed a whole bunch of extra ligatures to go along with that. I've got all the usual "regular" ligatures (liga), plus an additional bunch of "discretionary" ligs.

The weird thing is that when I test the font (that I've made myself) in my font program, all the ligature lookups come out just fine, and work just like they're supposed to -- but then, when I embed the font into my ebook and view it, only the "liga" ones render and display automatically, none of the "dlig" ones are showing up.

I have no idea why! I've edited fonts in the past, and created new discretionary ligs myself, and got them to work just fine in my ebooks -- it's beyond me why they're not working now (especially since they all work fine when I test those ligature lookups out in my font program).

Any ideas? Here's the code I'm using in my CSS -- which I learned how to do in these forums, and which seem to have worked just fine no problem. Is there perhaps an issue I'm not aware of in there?...

@font-face {
	font-family: "Caps";
	font-style: normal;
	src: url("../Fonts/Wickednesse.ttf") format("truetype");
	-webkit-hyphens:none;
	-epub-hyphens:none;
	-moz-hyphens:none;
	hyphens:none;
	-moz-font-feature-settings: "hist=1, liga=1, dlig=1";
	-ms-font-feature-settings: "hist", "liga", "dlig";
	-webkit-font-feature-settings: "hist", "liga", "dlig";
	-o-font-feature-settings: "hist", "liga", "dlig";
	font-feature-settings: "hist", "liga", "dlig";
}

One thing I did already try what changing the "format" in the above code from "truetype" to "opentype," since my font is a TT font that includes OT features. That seemed to make no difference -- either way, my "regular" ligs (liga) show up no prob, while the "discretionary" ones (dlig) don't.

Any help is much appreciated!

[Psymon]

I guess nobody knows the answer to my question, but in my font I changed all my discretionary ligature lookups to standard lig lookups, and now everything works okay. That's rather weird, I could've sworn that other discretionary ligs that I'd created myself in other fonts did show up just fine -- but perhaps I'm mistaken about that.

In any case, is this others' experience, too -- that only standard ligs show up as they're supposed to in ebooks, but not discretionary ones?

[GeoffR]

Readers based on Adobe RMSDK, (at least up to RMSDK 10 / ADE 3) only use ligature substitutions from 'liga', and ignore 'dlig', 'hlig', etc.

Putting all ligatures in 'liga' as you have done is the only solution I think.

[Psymon]

Ah, okay -- great, thanks! It's nice to have confirmation that I'm not losing my marbles.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Readers based on Adobe RMSDK, (at least up to RMSDK 10 / ADE 3) only use ligature substitutions from 'liga', and ignore 'dlig', 'hlig', etc.

Putting all ligatures in 'liga' as you have done is the only solution I think.

That would be the best solution for backwards compatibility.

@Psymon: I found out by chance that the latest RMSDK 12.5.0 based ADE versions, e.g. ADE 4.5.4, support at least some OpenType features (I only tested, hlig, dlig, onum and smcp), in epub3 books.

[JSWolf]

Now if only we could get RMDSK 12.5.0 without the new DRM. Does any Reader use RMDSK 12.5.0?

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

I found out by chance that the latest RMSDK 12.5.0 based ADE versions, e.g. ADE 4.5.4, support at least some OpenType features (I only tested, hlig, dlig, onum and smcp), in epub3 books.

Oh, that's odd, because it's in ADE that I test my books first, and where I noticed that all my dlig lookups weren't working, only the liga ones (didn't have any hlig or anything else).

In any case, changing all my lookups to standard ones instead of discretionary did the trick -- although I'm not really enough of an expert (by any means) with type design to know if there's any negative repercussions of doing so.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Oh, that's odd, because it's in ADE that I test my books first, and where I noticed that all my dlig lookups weren't working, only the liga ones (didn't have any hlig or anything else).

In any case, changing all my lookups to standard ones instead of discretionary did the trick -- although I'm not really enough of an expert (by any means) with type design to know if there's any negative repercussions of doing so.

I tested Doitsu's ePub with ADE 2.0.1, some version ADE 3.x as used in Bluefire Reader for Windows), & my Kobo Aura H2O with the latest firmware. None of them worked to show the OpenType features. Seems we need the newest version for that. The problem is that most programs/app/Readers using RMDSK (ADE) are not using the latest version and thus, the OpenType features won't work in more cases than they will work.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I tested Doitsu's ePub with ADE 2.0.1, some version ADE 3.x as used in Bluefire Reader for Windows), & my Kobo Aura H2O with the latest firmware. None of them worked to show the OpenType features. Seems we need the newest version for that. The problem is that most programs/app/Readers using RMDSK (ADE) are not using the latest version and thus, the OpenType features won't work in more cases than they will work.

Thanks for checking that out (re testing and stuff) -- hope you didn't go to all that trouble just for little ol' me! Nice to have confirmation, though, even if it's not the result one was hoping for.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Thanks for checking that out (re testing and stuff) -- hope you didn't go to all that trouble just for little ol' me! Nice to have confirmation, though, even if it's not the result one was hoping for.

I did it to for you and me. I wanted to see what worked. I was hoping I would be able to use the small caps in Charis SIL (my version CareInk) so I could very easily go from fake small caps to real small caps with just a simple CSS change.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Oh, that's odd, because it's in ADE that I test my books first, and where I noticed that all my dlig lookups weren't working, only the liga ones (didn't have any hlig or anything else).

The dlig lookups only work with epub3 books and only with ADE 4.5.4 or higher. (ADE has two different rendering engines.)

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I tested Doitsu's ePub with ADE 2.0.1, some version ADE 3.x as used in Bluefire Reader for Windows) [...]

As I clearly stated in my post, the test epub only works with the ADE 4.5.4 for Windows and ADE for Android. If you download and install either program, you'll get the same results.

Please re-test my test file with ADE 4.5.4 for Windows/Android.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Please re-test my test file with ADE 4.5.4 for Windows/Android.

I cannot do that as it means installing ADE 4.5.4 and since I want nothing to do with the new DRM, it's a no go.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I cannot do that as it means installing ADE 4.5.4 and since I want nothing to do with the new DRM, it's a no go.

You can safely install several different ADE versions side by side. BTW, Blue Fire Reader for Android (and iOS) uses an outdated RMSDK engine. For comparison testing you might want to install the official ADE for Android version, which is always more up-to-date than the Bluefire version.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I did it to for you and me. I wanted to see what worked.

Well, thank you once again for that effort!

Originally Posted by Doitsu

The dlig lookups only work with epub3 books and only with ADE 4.5.4 or higher. (ADE has two different rendering engines.)

Oh, that explains why my EPUB2 tests didn't work. Aha.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

You can safely install several different ADE versions side by side. BTW, Blue Fire Reader for Android (and iOS) uses an outdated RMSDK engine. For comparison testing you might want to install the official ADE for Android version, which is always more up-to-date than the Bluefire version.

I mostly wanted to test my H2O given that it recently had a new firmware released for it. I tested both whatever version RMDSK and whatever version Access and neither worked with the OT features. I'm curious if koreader would work.