Alternates used in cursive for last letter

#1

Hi! I’m new to Fontself/Adobe. I don’t think I saw this topic or I’m just not familiar with terminology.

Is there a way to use an alternate only if the letter occurs at the end of a sentence?

I don’t know if that’s clear. I’ll put an example pic.!

image|690x299

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#2

Hi, for this purpose, I would create a ligature of the letter and a dot.

Greetz
Hybi

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#3

I think what you are saying is “Positional Alternates”. I’m not sure if it is supported by Fontself.

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#4

Fontself does not support contextual ligatures yet. We hope to bring them in the future but working on some other time savers first :wink:

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#5

Hi Franz,

latest version 3.4.0 is working absolutely properly here.
So, no updates recently is no problem for me!
But I’m curious what you will bring us next :astonished:

Greez
Hybi :wave:

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#6

hey franz. it’s been a few years since i asked about contextual ligatures, is there any progress on adding it as a feature? i couldn’t find anything, so assuming no, but i would love it. it’s been 3 years.

if not, has anyone used a different font creator that has contextual ligatures as an option?

#7

Hi christair,
since there is no contextual ligatures, you can use a trick, if you know when an other ligature is needed.

Example: If you like to use to kind of the letter »s«, one that is only shown at the end of a word, than you can can create a ligature like this:

In German, there used to be two S letters. A pointed S, which was used at the beginning and in the middle of the word, and a round S, which was only used at the end of the word. (BTW, the pointed and round S gave rise to the ß in German, first as a ligature, later as a real letter).

Here is an example of how it is possible in Fontself for the round S to appear automatically at the end of a word:
( A ) I have created the letters A - Z and a - z …
( B ) … with two S letters. The round S is the alternative (.alt) to the pointed S. See Layers.
( C ) I have also created punctuation marks that are needed to create the ligatures for the S at the end of words. Tip: for punctuation marks, it has proved useful to enter the unicodes in Layers as the names of the glyphs instead of the punctuation mark.
( D ) The first ligature is the s plus space “s .liga” (see yellow field in Layers). The other ligatures are a combination of the s plus a punctuation mark that can directly follow a letter at the end of a word. So dot, comma, exclamation mark, question mark, quotes up to the hyphen.

screen1
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( without illustration ) First drag the dummy with the guides into Fontself, then the letters A - Z and a - z with the guides.

( E ) Then drag the punctuation marks with the guides into Fontself and finally the S ligatures.
( B ) The pointed S and the round S (.alt1) in Fontself.
( F ) The ligature S plus space must be adjusted in width: Open this glyph by double-clicking.

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( G ) Add the width of the space to the width “Right”, here 50 + 400 = 450.
( H ) Close the detailed representation of the glyph.

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( I ) After saving and installing the “S-Font”, as I have called it, you can write a text with OpenType options switched on. Every S, except those at the end of words, should now be a pointed S. If the letter stands alone, then the Alt-Space (protected space, html:  ) helps so that it remains the pointed S. To make it easier to recognise, I have made the letters S black by hand in the sample sentence.

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My S-Font as .otf for you to test it: S-Font.otf.zip (12.5 KB)

Tip: My timesaver Javascripts for Illustrator and Fontself

  1. https://www.behance.net/gallery/123822365/Javascript-for-Illustrator-Font-Outline-with-Names
  2. https://www.behance.net/gallery/124007461/Javascript-for-Illustrator-Rename-Abc2Unicode
  3. https://www.behance.net/gallery/126682449/Javascript-for-Illustrator-MakeGlyphsBolderjsx
  4. https://www.behance.net/gallery/132742865/Javascript-for-Illustrator-Find-objects-by-name
  5. https://www.behance.net/gallery/127731937/Javascript-for-Illustrator-RenamePlusjsx
  6. https://www.behance.net/gallery/134036097/Javascript-for-AI-CompoundPathjsx-keeps-name

If you like my timesaver javascripts, you can buy a coffee or more. The link can be found at the end of the .pdf-files in German or English.

Happy Eastern,
jens

Update: You can find a German version of this tutorial at https://www.computergrafik-know-how.de/eine-schrift-mit-spitzem-und-rundem-s-erstellen/

#8

danke! ist eine antworten perfekt :slight_smile: