Numbers of ligatures in a word

Glyphs
1

Hi there !

I’m currently working on a font for French language with several ligatures. For exemple I made the following a_f_f_l, u_e and n_c, so in the word ‘affluence’ it is written a_f_f_l u_e n_c e but it affects the legibility of the font as I only want a_f_f_l to show up.

Another exemple with the following ligatures m_u, t_i, t_u and d_e. The word ‘multitude’ would be written m_u l t_i t_u d_e but I don’t want the d_e to show up.

The question here is how is it possible to limit the numbers of ligatures in a word ?

2

It doesn’t work per word. You could add contextual exceptions with an ignore rule, so that two ligatures do not follow each other within x glyphs.

1 Like
3

Thanks. Could you show me an exemple ? I’m quite new to Glyphs :smile:

4
  1. In Font Info > Features, add a class called LIGATURES. Also add some of the predefined classes, I suggest AllGlyphs, but perhaps in your case, Uppercase or Lowercase makes more sense. In LIGATURES, add a token for all ligatures (a bit geeky, but very smart; see the Tokens tutorial), or copy and paste the names of the ligature glyphs in there.
  2. Steal the code from the liga or dlig features (copy it), disable the automated dlig and liga features.
  3. Create a new dlig or liga (depending on which of these you prefer, take a look at the Ligatures tutorial), paste the code you copied in step 2, mark each glyph before the keyword by with a suffixed ' tick mark and prefix it with an ignore line:
ignore sub @LIGATURES @AllGlyphs' @AllGlyphs' @AllGlyphs';
ignore sub @LIGATURES @AllGlyphs @AllGlyphs' @AllGlyphs' @AllGlyphs';

sub f' f' l' by f_f_l;
sub… # more three-letter ligatures…

And similarly for two- or four-letter ligatures. Note the placement of the tick marks.

More about feature code with ignore rules: