Ligatures breaking expressions

[Herbie444]

1. New Project -> New Comp -> Text Layer with sample text with numbers
2. Add a text animator (scale) -> change scale values
3. Add Expression Selector and replace expression with:

• text.sourceText.charAt(textIndex - 1).match(/[0-9]/) ? 100 : 0

This expression will change the scale of all numbers found in the text. Anything in the regex match can be there.. this is just an example. This should work as intended and it does.

If the font has ligatures and is checked, it will not work correctly. Tested this in AE 24.6.6 and 25.2.2 and is still not working as intended. The sample font I had used is Daniels Signature - Signature. Also tested with HopelessRomanticSociety - Regular. Both seem to show the same incorrect behavior.

I'm not sure if it's incorrectly calling the indices or if there's something extra that needs to be called for it to work with ligatures enabled. Any ideas or is this a bug?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey @Herbie444,

Thanks for the post. I'm Kevin from Adobe Support, a moderator here. The team might need more information from you, so you may want to provide system info, etc. in a reply. In the meantime, try reinstalling these fonts to see if that might help. I hope that a solution from the team or the community will come soon. Sorry for the frustration.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Herbie444]

Hi Kevin, I tried reinstalling the fonts and same issue.

I've tried this expression on 2 other machines as well -- 2 with Windows 10 and one Windows 11.

My specs are:

Intel i9-9960x

128GB of RAM

Nvidia GTX 4090

Windows 10 Pro Build 19045.5854

I made a sample scene with a text index tester.. it looks like it's not an index error as it still gives correct values.

Ligature_Tester.aep 

[Herbie444]

I swapped to a different machine and made a new test with screenshots of what's happening before and after the ligatures checkbox is enabled (AE 24.6.6).

As you can see, the indices aren't changing (yellow layer) when enabling or disabling however that expression is not reading the textIndex correctly (purple layer).

New machine specs are:

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X 16-Core Processor

192 GB DDR5 RAM

Nvidia GTX 4090

Windows 11 Pro Build 26100.4061

[David.Arbor]

Hey @Herbie444,

This does look like a bug, and it's a good find. I was able to reproduce it on my end. I'll file it with the team.

Thanks,
- David, After Effects Engineering Team