Remove the fi ligature

[leiserfg]

Ligature are awesome for text reading but when you are in a terminal or when you are drawing it can be cumbersome, so Meslo is a font for terminals and programmers then they don't need ligatures I beleve.

[metalelf0]

I generally like ligatures but this one looks off. I find it disturbing and I don't see the need for it.

[inoas]

Actually it would be cool if ligatures could be added to a Meslo Code variant: #28

[ZeroKnight]

So for those interested, here's a very quick and dirty script that will remove the fi and fl ligatures from Meslo (or any font, AFAIU). The script takes paths to font files as arguments and spits out a copy with the aforementioned ligatures removed.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
import fontforge

for f in sys.argv[1:]:
    font = fontforge.open(f)
    try:
        font.removeGlyph(0xFB01)
        font.removeGlyph(0xFB02)
    except ValueError:
        continue
    font.generate(f + '.fix')

I only needed it for just this one-off use, so I CBF to make it nicer. The script depends on FontForge.

[marcinlesek]

Thanks @ZeroKnight for script, but for me, it isn't working properly. After running it:

$ fontforge -lang=py -script parse.py ./LigaMesloLGMDZ-Regular.ttf

it generates two files:

LigaMesloLGMDZ-Regular.ttf.afm
LigaMesloLGMDZ-Regular.ttf.fix

and when I'm changing fix one to LigaMesloLGMDZ-Regular-fix.ttf TTF format, MacOS couldn't install it (without any error).

Maybe you (or someone else) expected something similar?

[ZeroKnight]

@marcinlesek

I don't run MacOS and have no real experience with it, so I'm afraid that I don't think that I can offer much help.

That said, I don't know if it would make any difference, but I ran the script with python directly, and not with fontforge -script. Maybe give that a shot?

[marcinlesek]

@ZeroKnight still this same, I tried both earlier - maybe you could upload somewhere your version of Meslo Font with fi ligature fixed?

Thanks in advance,
Marcin

[marcinlesek]

By the courtesy of @ZeroKnight, I got his fixed Meslo fonts, which could be downloaded below.

Meslo LG DZ v1.2 - fl-fi Removed.zip

Unfortunately, on my Mac with Mojave 10.14.5 it still doesn't work 💔

I could try to install font with FontBook, but I saw few quick progress bars and nothing happen more (Font isn't added to FontBook list). I also tried to add it manually to user/Library/Fonts but after that move, no app could use them (nothing see them as available font, from WebStorm through VS Code to basic TextEdit). Did someone occur similar problems? 🤔

Thanks in advance,
Marcin

[volfyd]

For anyone coming across this later, if you don't want to install the python fontforge module, you can just use the older fontforge language:

fontforge -lang=pe -c "Open(\$1);Select('fi');SelectMore('fl');DetachAndRemoveGlyphs();Generate(\$1:r+'.ttf')" Menlo.ttc