Font Typesetting Function 14: “Discretionary Ligature (dlig) Part 2”

In the previous article, I introduced “discretionary ligature (dlig)” that calls up optional ligature in the Latin font of Hama Mincho Italic as an example. In the case of Japanese fonts, “discretionary ligatures” have the following replacement patterns: “℻” for “FAX,” “㍊” for “ミリバール (millibar),” and “㍿” for “株式会社 (Co., Ltd.).” Additionally, there is the example of replacing “JIS” with “〄.” It is completely off-topic, but the JIS mark was changed in 2004, so, young people may have never seen the old JIS mark.

Kinshachi Font Hime, which is part of the CityFont Project, includes the Kinshachi mark on both sides. To output this mark, “discretionary ligature” is used. It can be replaced from either “右鯱” or “左鯱.”

As “discretionary ligature” in Japanese fonts is assumed to be applied after selecting part of a text, care must be taken that applying it to the entire text inadvertently may lead to an incomprehensible result (this is one thing that just happens in the OpenType fonts).

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