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IJ-digraph #133
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Agreed. The italics ligature needs to be added. However, I doubt that the roman ligature would look good. There are no vertical stems as narrowly set next to each other throughout the font. Such glyph would stand out as a black blob in every text. |
Yeah, it was just a quick sketch. This version only has digraph for italics, but not sure what Garamond variant is used: |
There's an italic ij ligature in the EB specimen: Cursiff Parangon de Granjon, line 4: Do you have a higher resolution specimen available? I only found https://image.linotype.com/files/pdf/specimen.pdf , which is complete but relatively low-res and https://archive.org/details/historytechnique0000nesb/page/100/mode/2up , which I assume is a facsimile and only covers a subset. |
The scanned version at the Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main is quite high resolution: Note that the available PDF is rather small, but if you click the image on the site, then the full screen arrows in the toolbar to the right, you can zoom. |
Thank you, both! Meanwhile, I have another very good source these fonts. Henrik D. L. Vervliet (2010) “French renaissance printing types: a conspectus” is a comprehensive collection on the topic. The ij ligature is definitely well attested in Granjon’s italics of all sizes :) I just don’t see a good example for this ligature in a roman font. |
Likely Granjon never created a roman minuscule digraph/ligature — possibly it's not really a thing? In modern Dutch typography, it seems to mostly show up in capitals and italics, though some typefaces might use kerning (as in my bad example)... Disclaimer: I'm not Dutch, but I transcribe a lot of pre-1800 Danish cursive (so-called "Gothic cursive"), where it was sometimes used. In those sources it looks pretty much identical to ÿ (and indeed y was usually written with diaresis, so distinguishing ÿ/y and ij is mostly contextual, based on what you know the spelling "should" be). So for my sake, there's not really a need for a roman ij-digraph, as I use italics when I quote sources that use them ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IJ_(digraph) Also, it seems the ij used in the specimen is narrower than simply i + j. Below is a comparison between my sketch of that width (right) and the same sketch narrowed by some 20% (left) which is closer to Granjon's |
Oh, now I now why I was so confused when you said there was no i_j ligature in the font because I was sure I did it. But then again couldn’t find it. Being away from that for almost ten years really makes one forget things. There’s of course a code point in Unicode (U+0133) and it is populated in all four fonts (EBG12 Re and It and EBG08 Re and It). They’re very tightly set in the regular fonts—just as tightly as I before said I wouldn’t do it (oh my)—and the 08-It one even is really ligated whereas the one in 12-It isn’t. What’s missing altogether is a lookup for ligature replacement besides using the dedicated code point. So the todos are actually
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@georgd Does the specimen reflect the current state of the project (apart from initials)? |
Thank you Georg, that looks like an excellent path forward. I will help as much as I can! Tim: If you mean the specimen.pdf from this project it does not. The nightly updates just rebuild the font files, everything else stays as is until another manual release |
Yes, I know. My wording was not clear: Does it reflect the state of the project, before we started working on it again. |
Sorry, I understand :) I think this is the latest version online from before the new interest. Both the file modification date and the front page are dated Apr 8, 2014 |
Ok. The specimen is indeed on the state of 2014. The current nightly adds lots of Initials (thanks @timgrei ) and reflects the beginning of remedying some overzealousness of mine:
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Btw, as for lookups. Perhaps it should be a toggleable stylistic set or only when explicitly using U+0133? I'm not sure if there are words in eg. Dutch that have ij but do not use the digraph, but it wouldn't surprise me that for example a compound noun exists where it would be wrong to use it. |
There are words in Dutch texts that have ij as i and j instead of the digraph ij. In a few cases it can be both Dutch ij or foreign i+j depending on the context, like Dutch given name Arijan or Serbian given name Arijan, or Dutch toponym Meije and French toponym La Meije. There’s no problem having a proper ij ligature for those in context where ligatures are common, like in an italic that has many ligatures or in handwritten styles. In roman styles it’s more problematic, if present it should mostly likely be in dlig or ssXX, or at least easy to disable. @georgd |
@moyogo thanks a lot for your valuable comment. I think there’s nothing special to do for a Dutch localization
Would you agree? |
Yes, that sounds good to me. Some users may appreciate a ligated /ij in Roman and /i_j or a special /IJ and /I_J as a baseline J with a shortened I in the top left, for signage or display for example, as a ssXX stylistic set or character variant cvXX feature. But for text this is rather unusual and breaks the examples mentionned above. |
Thanks! I don't see how the display I_J you’re referring to could match this font’s design. I think this works fine in fonts that show a wider bottom arc in upper case J. Next to the narrow Garamond J the U shaped I_J feels much out of place, in my opinion. |
Such thing can be made by inserting ZWNJ between i and j to prevent ligature. |
Nobody (in the pool of normal users) is going to insert ZWNJ in Dutch text. The consensus is that ij is a digraph that sometimes behaves like a single letter, at least in the official spelling rules. The ligature should not be the default but should be easily accessible for when it makes sense. |
So you need to make an investigation on Dutch dictionaries. So you can make analysis to acknowledge which words shouldn’t have ij ligature and set rules for them. |
@KrasnayaPloshchad What do you mean? |
It would be nice to have IJ-digraphs for Dutch and other texts which use it.
These are some quick and ugly versions I made, I can supply them in vector format if needed as a base (.eps?)
![ij](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/644671/196930458-d53d9320-774a-4bfc-85c3-d41d94c53373.png)
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