Re: ligature formation across text chunks

Glenn Adams:
> The current css3-text has the following under [1]:
...
> > If the UA cannot expand a cursive script without breaking the
> > cursive connections, it should not apply letter-spacing between
> > grapheme clusters of that script at all.
> 
> > When the resulting space between two characters is not the same as the
> > default space, user agents should not use optional ligatures.

I missed that, thanks.

> This text provides for the Arabic Script case (a cursive script), by
> indicating that the space to be extended is between disjoint graphemes.
> Furthermore, this text provides for the case that only optional (but not
> mandatory) ligatures be disabled when a letter space would apply between the
> characters that contribute to the ligature's component allographs.

That sounds reasonable.

> I believe this text (the last sentence) may be acceptable in Indic scripts
> as well, since it only prevents optional conjunct formation in the case that
> letter spacing is non-zero. The only issue then is if an author wanted to
> use letter spacing *and* still have (some or all) optional ligatures
> (conjuncts) used. The alternative in that case would be to use an authoring
> tool that performs its own letter spacing and outputs glyphs at specific
> origins.

Maybe font-variant can be used to force optional ligatures to be used in
this case?

-- 
Cameron McCormack ≝ http://mcc.id.au/

Received on Friday, 20 May 2011 04:03:07 UTC