Re: Medievalist ligature character in the PUA

From: Karl Pentzlin (karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de)
Date: Wed Jan 27 2010 - 17:40:24 CST

  • Next message: Karl Pentzlin: "Re: Medievalist ligature character in the PUA"

    Am Mittwoch, 27. Januar 2010 um 06:14 schrieb Asmus Freytag:

    AF> The way to get MS and others to support a
    AF> writing style is to create lots and lots of data
    AF> in it, and to get that data popular. :)
    AF> So, the minute you have a Fraktur revival,
    AF> you incrementally create pressure for vendors
    AF> to support it.

    Regarding Fraktur, beside any revivalist activities, it has a continuous
    use for special purposes. For instance, it is used on labels of
    "traditional" foods, on restaurants and store signs, and on menus of
    some "traditional" restaurants. It is also sometimes used for
    typesetting, especially when preserving the appearance of "classical"
    German literature of the 18/19th century.

    However, the problem of MS Word et al. and ligatures is deeper, beyond
    Fraktur. Almost any quality Latin typesetting uses at least fi and fl
    ligatures, and the adequate OpenType liga instuctions therefore are
    contained in widespread fonts like DejaVu or Linux Libertine, as well
    as in high-quality fonts like Adobe Minion Pro.
    If MS Word does not support this, you simply cannot do quality
    typesetting in Latin with such a software.

    At least, the current beta of MS Word 2010 supports ligatures in
    principle. The fact that this does not work with a lot of fonts
    containing OpenType liga or rlig tables (like the Breitkopf Fraktur
    included in my previous mail, beside others) may be a problem of the
    Beta version (I hope some Microsoft employees who read here will file
    it as a Beta case, as I did not figure out until now how to give Beta
    feedback to MS by appropriate effort).

      Now, Minion Pro is one of the font where the ligating works
    with MS Word 2010 Beta, but the user has to switch it on within a
    second level menu, rather having it on by default. (I attri
    AF> It helps if at least some browsers
    AF> can support what you need, so you have a way
    AF> to publish content.

    AF> Cheers,

    AF> A./



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