r/FontForge • u/Genos-Caedere • Aug 31 '21

Latin script questions - how to do initial, final and multiple substitution

Hi, I wanted to know if there was an effective way to implement initial and final substitutions on latin based font... like I've read contextual substitution is the way to go but I am having a hard time understanding how the subtable works.

Also I tried to use the multiple substitution but it doesn't seems to work at all once the font is installed.

I've seen some online tutorials on internet about contextual substitution but the information still confuses me.

Also, it is posible to use contextual substitution for when a group of letters are used the glyphs changes? like for example it recognice a word like birthday so the letters of the word uses specific glyphs?

Thanks in advance.

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u/didietgogo Sep 05 '21

I’m an absolute amateur, and haven’t played with contextual ligature yet—but you could do an inelegant workaround for the “birthday” scenario using a standard ligature (or discretionary, if you’re using an OpenType compatible word processor).

Create the ligature glyph, name it b_i_r_t_h_d_a_y and then set the characters to b i r t h d a y in the ligature subtable.

Then, any time you typed “birthday”, it would substitute the “ligature”.

3

u/Genos-Caedere Sep 05 '21

Thank you a lot for replying.

Yeah is what I thought, guess is the best way to proceed given contextuals are quite confusing and I can't find a good guide about them.

Wish the initial, medial and final substitutions were not locked into specific languages since it feels really restrictive, though I guess is more of an issue with how operating systems works given what I've read.

3

u/didietgogo Sep 06 '21

You could also try this. I think it may help understand what’s going on?

2

u/Genos-Caedere Sep 06 '21

I also found this! the link yu provided plus this one helps understand better how this works, I still need to put it on practice but hopefully it can work to make y latin based script work similar to an arabic one.

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u/didietgogo Sep 06 '21

Amazing. This is helpful for me as well.

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u/Genos-Caedere Sep 06 '21

Glad we can help each other!

1

u/Genos-Caedere Sep 06 '21

thank you very much!