Writing shorter CALT, needs advice!

Design
1

Hi, lets say in arabic i want to use CALT to replace alef-ar by alef-ar.001 only if lam-ar.init comes after it, but even if any glyph from the @tashkeel class (Diacritics) came between them…

The easy way is to write it in two lines:
sub alef-ar' lam-ar.init by alef-ar.001;
sub alef-ar' @tashkeel lam-ar.init by alef-ar.001;

But can i write it in just one line?
I tried:
sub alef-ar' [lam-ar.init [@tashkeel lam-ar.init]] by alef-ar.001;

but it would not compile :relieved: Is there a way for it to be in one line?

Any idea?

2

That is what the ‘lookupflag IgnoreMarks’ is for. Then you only need the first substitution line.

3

If you put stuff in square brackets [], it is a class, so it represents one glyph and the order does not matter. A contextual run over a different number of glyphs (in your case 1 vs. 2) must be two separate rules.

But in this particular case, the IgnoreMarks flag is a better idea, as Georg pointed out.

4

Thanks guys, so it seems like i always need to write these in two lines.

5

I would suggest just this:

lookupflag IgnoreMarks;
sub alef-ar' lam-ar.init by alef-ar.001;

And you don’t need to define the tashkeel class.