How to retouch the connect point to make all words look like ligatures?

Glyphs
1

Hello, I am working on a font without any spacing between letters. So in practice, almost every letter on either side of the letter will be completely overlapped with the letters before and after it.

On this basis, I would like to have rounded corners between the overlapping fonts to retouch the connecting points. So what can I do to set up different preset parts on different letter combinations to achieve rounded corners on the connection points?

螢幕截圖 2023-03-21 下午2.01.09
螢幕截圖 2023-03-21 下午2.01.091788×290 19.3 KB

Here is an example of an “AIR”, look at the connection points on either side of the bottom of the “I”. The upper part of the connection point is a complete right angle, which is not what I was aiming for. Is there any way I can make such a connection point to be a rounded angle?

2

You can design alternative glyphs for such contexts. You then switch the normal glyph to the alternative using feature code. For example:

sub A' I by A.exit;
sub I R' by R.entry;

And the design a glyph A.exit that has a rounded serif corner on the right; similarly design a R.entry that has the required rounding on its left side. You can reuse the A and R glyphs as components in these new glyphs so only need to design the added bits.

3

Thank you very much for the tip. After I actually tested it, at least the AIR example works perfectly as I imagined by now.

Although it would add a lot of work because my font has multiple language glyphs, but after all, this really fits my idea perfectly. Again, thank you very much!

4

You might be able to cut some work by designing rounded joiner glyphs like so:

1555×657 37.1 KB

(I’m sure you can come up with better glyph names.)

But they require one to many substitutions which not all software supports as well.

6

So far, I am using your advice to develop this font, and overall the process was relatively smooth, thank you very much.

Also, I have a new question, suppose the “I” in my example has several variants such as “I.full” and “I.half”. Is there a way to only show “I.full” and “I.half” as options for character variation and by selecting them, they will also directly convert to the version corresponding to the previous letter?

If the above does not work. Then is there a way to make it easier for users to select the corresponding one, rather than seeing so many variants in the selection and it is difficult to understand the difference between each one.

Thank you!

7

That depends on the application that the font user is using.

If a user picks a specific variant, I don’t think that these glyphs can be further substituted by font features.

8

By the way, suppose I want B,C,D to become the A-B or A-C or A-D that I have prepared the connection parts when they are behind the letter A. Is there any way I can code these three action in a single line? If so, how should I write the code? Forgive me for not having any experience in coding.

9

You can write something like this:

sub A [B C D]' by [B.Aleft C.Aleft D.Aleft];