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CSS CSS Foundations Web Typography Web Fonts

Valentin Fezza
Valentin Fezza
18,178 Points
Posted by Valentin Fezza
Valentin Fezza
18,178 Points

Is there a reason as to why the second and third "f"'s had no ligature joining them?

I couldn't help but notice than Guil's example was not exactly accurate. The second and third "f"'s in the video had no ligature to join them into a single glyph.

2 Answers

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Imgur

The second and third "f"'s in the video had no ligature to join them into a single glyph.

Nor would I expect it to. I wouldn't expect DroidSerif to have a glyph for a quadruple ligature.

http://www.droidfonts.com/local/pdf/Droid-Serif-Pro.pdf

Valentin Fezza
Valentin Fezza
18,178 Points
Valentin Fezza
Valentin Fezza
18,178 Points

Thanks James! That makes sense.

I thought each typeface had some sort of rule to create ligatures on the fly.

Maybe when under a certain kerning threshold or something.

Is that even a thing?

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

I thought each typeface had some sort of rule to create ligatures on the fly.

tl;dr Fonts do have rules about contextual alternates, however they are based on letter combinations.

Let's define our terms:

  • glyph: A single character in a font
  • ligature: When two or more letters are joined together to form one glyph or character
  • letter form: How a particular character is drawn in a particular glyph
  • contextual alternate An Alternate shape for a letter only used in relation to specific other adjacent or nearby letters

I'm not much of a typography person so that's about how I understand it, you can also check out http://blog.webink.com/opentype-features-css/ for more info.