[fontforge-users] Ligatures from the start

[Tarbolton]

Hello everybody,
I'm new here and with FF. I'm trying to create composite glyphs, but I can't
find some basic informations anywhere on the web or on this site:

1- For example I want to create a "fb" ligature. Where do I *create* my new
glyph, in which box of the unicode table? Not in the "f" or the "b" one I
guess, if the unicode value has to be changed?

2- I tried to create the new glyph in the "f" box though, and opened (as
explained in some tutorials) the Glyph Info dialog box, then named "f" in
"fb", first didn't know what to do with the unicode value... well, you see.
When I tried to change unicode value "by the name" though, because I didn't
find any info about all that stuff, a "-1" replaced the f's U+0066, and
there appeared full of question marks everywhere on the unicode table... I
cancelled everything.

3- By the way, after all these tries, I still don't understand why the
"Build Composite Glyph" of the "Element" section always stays grey, whatever
I do.

I'd just like to be explained the complete way, I mean from the very first
start /and not the half/, that leads to a bit of success in the ligature
creation. :)

Thanks for your help...



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[marty39]

I'm not an expert user but I'll try to help.

There's some useful information, and some misleading information, at this
page:
https://fontforge.github.io/meta/guide-page-3.html

1- Where to build the ligature: that page confirms my own thought that if
the ligature you're building is not a standard ligature, you should build it
in the Private Use Area from U+E000 to U+F8FF. Here's what I would do:
menu, encoding, reencode, Unicode-BMP (so you can see the Private Use Area)
menu, view, goto, U+E000 (to get to the first slot in the Private Use Area)
right click in that slot, glyph info, change glyph name to f_b, OK (ignore
the Unicode char)

The misleading information is that when you give the glyph that name,
fontforge will guess that it's a ligature and insert the appropriate
references and a caret. In my Mac OS version, it doesn't. You can open the
glyph in glyph view, menu, view, goto, f, copy the outline, go back to the
f_b tab and paste, and so on. But there's no way within fontforge to put in
a caret.

2- Fontforge can only set Unicode value from name for the standard Unicode
mapping. If the name is non-standard, fontforge sets the value to -1,
meaning there's no Unicode value for it in the standard mapping. Don't try
to change the Unicode value; just create it in the Private Use Area and
leave it there.

3- Build composite glyph only works for glyphs that fontforge knows about.
The misleading page says fontforge will know about your ligature if you name
it the way it says you should, but (at least in my fontforge version) it
doesn't: menu, element, build stays gray.

That's how to build a ligature. Adding instructions about how to use the
ligature is another thing entirely, and I'm not quite sure how that works.




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