Re: How to type Fraktur with ligatures

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Wed Nov 14 2007 - 14:01:55 CST

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    On 11/14/2007 11:21 AM, Gerrit Sangel wrote:
    > Hello,
    >
    > I have a question concerning typesetting Fraktur texts with Unicode.
    >
    There are extensive discussions on this in the archives of this list.
    > Fraktur uses the long s ſ. This is not a problem, one can easily map it onto
    > the keyboard.
    >
    > But the problem occurs when bearing the mind the ligatures.
    >
    > As written in the “Kleiner Fraktur-Knigge”
    > (http://www.e-welt.net/bfds_2003/veroeff/Knigge_digital.pdf page 15), some
    > ligatures are mandatory (e.g. ch, ck, tz). Some are recommended, like ff, fi,
    > ſt, ſſ and so on.
    >
    > Sometimes the ligatures are not applied when they occur between two
    > independent morphems (?)
    >
    Correct.
    > For example:
    >
    > “Katze” and “entziehen”
    > The first one has a “tz” ligature, but the second one does not have one,
    > because it consists of two different parts (“ent” and “ziehen”). I believe,
    > this discussion was on this mailing list a week ago or so.
    >
    And the year before that, and the year before that....
    > My question is now, how can I control this? I guess the ligatures are made via
    > Opentype, so that won’t be a problem, but the problem is how to control that
    > at a given position a ligature should not be formed.
    > Maybe via the ZWNJ?
    >
    > Maybe then like this:
    > “Katze” and “ent[ZWNJ]ziehen”?
    >
    That is indeed the approved way to *encode* text that is intended to be
    typeset in Fraktur. Whether your layout software will know to put all
    the mandatory ligatures in, and whether it respects the ZWNJ is another
    matter, but officially, from the side of Unicode, your approach is
    considered correct, proper, sanctioned, authorized, conformant and all that.

    Cheers,

    A./
    > I hope you can help me.
    >
    > Thanks in advance
    > Gerrit Sangel
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >



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