RE: ligature formation across text chunks

Hi Glenn,

In your example, there are additional offsets for ‘f’ so ligature formation won’t happen.
Reading the spec more closely, I came across this section:
The following additional rules apply to ligature formation:

 *   As defined in CSS2<http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-CSS2-20080411/text.html#spacing-props>, ([CSS2<http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/refs.html#ref-CSS2>], section 16.4), when the resultant space between two characters is not the same as the default space, user agents should not use ligatures; thus, if there are non-default values for properties ‘kerning’<http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/text.html#KerningProperty> or ‘letter-spacing’<http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/text.html#LetterSpacingProperty>, the user agent should not use ligatures.
I *think* this means that ligatures will only form if

-          There is no dx/dy offset in the <text> tag for the glyphs

-          The spacing between the characters in the ligature is the same as the 2 individual glyphs drawn with default positioning

Rik


From: Glenn Adams [mailto:glenn@skynav.com]
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2011 12:31 AM
To: Rik Cabanier
Cc: Cameron McCormack; Tavmjong Bah; Vincent Hardy; public-svg-wg@w3.org
Subject: Re: ligature formation across text chunks

I believe that is the implication: "that the authoring application should be aware that the SVG viewer is going to create a ligature and move the ‘e’ more to the left". Or at least that is my presumption in the absence of specifying x or dx coords for each output glyph. That is, if you have:

(1) <text x="100">coffee</text>

renderer may substitute 'ff' ligature and would adjust the origin of the following 'e' glyphs accordingly

(2) <text x="100" dx="0 0 1 2 -1 0">coffee</text>

renderer may substitute 'ff' ligature and would adjust the origin of the following 'e' glyphs accordingly;
furthermore, the current definition of dx on text & tspan (in SVG1.1) says that the entries in dx correspond to "the glyphs corresponding to the first n characters within this element"; in the case that a ligature is substituted we have a case where the 'ff' ligature is subject to two apparent dx adjustments, '1' and '2' as associated with the two 'f' characters; this is probably not the intended result but it remains an ambiguity in the current definitions of multiple x/dx (y/dy) entries in case there is not a 1:1 character to glyph mapping;

G.

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 10:43 PM, Rik Cabanier <cabanier@adobe.com<mailto:cabanier@adobe.com>> wrote:
Hi Glenn,

I don’t quite understand what you’re saying.
In my example ‘ff’ is an optional ligature, but the letter spacing is not the default as witnessed by the word being shorter with ligatures vs 2 simple glyphs.
So, if an author emits ‘coffee’ with all default letter spacing and SVG decides to substitute ‘ff’ for a ligature, there will be more space between ‘f’ and ‘e’ which will look incorrect.
Are you suggesting that the authoring application should be aware that the SVG viewer is going to create a ligature and move the ‘e’ more to the left?

I agree that there should be a mechanism to emit glyph id’s so you can pick the desired character from a font but that is a different problem.

Rik

From: Glenn Adams [mailto:glenn@skynav.com<mailto:glenn@skynav.com>]
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2011 9:44 PM
To: Rik Cabanier
Cc: Cameron McCormack; Tavmjong Bah; Vincent Hardy; public-svg-wg@w3.org<mailto:public-svg-wg@w3.org>

Subject: Re: ligature formation across text chunks

The cited text indicates that if space between characters is not the default (i.e., letter spacing has been applied), then the UA should NOT use an optional ligature. Since 'ff' is an optional ligature, then letter spacing should block ligature formation in this case.

However, if letter space does not apply, then, on the presumption that the UA is performing the character to glyph mapping process, it may choose to use the ligature.

The question here may be whether there should be some mechanism by which the author can indicate that no character to glyph mapping process be applied, i.e., other than the nominal CMAP process which is necessary. That is, how can the author declare that no substitution (including ligatures) should occur even in the absence of letter spacing.

G.
On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 10:17 PM, Rik Cabanier <cabanier@adobe.com<mailto:cabanier@adobe.com>> wrote:
> > > 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.
I do not believe that us true. For certain ligatures, the characters will be closer together than the individual glyphs.
See the attached PDF as an example.
This is also the reason that the auto-generation of ligatures in SVG is not a good idea because it will create gaps or overlap with subsequent glyghs.

Rik


> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-svg-wg-request@w3.org<mailto:public-svg-wg-request@w3.org> [mailto:public-svg-wg-<mailto:public-svg-wg->
> request@w3.org<mailto:request@w3.org>] On Behalf Of Cameron McCormack
> Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2011 9:03 PM
> To: Glenn Adams
> Cc: Tavmjong Bah; Vincent Hardy; public-svg-wg@w3.org<mailto:public-svg-wg@w3.org>
> Subject: 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/