More long s ligatures in Caslon

Report · Jul 12, 2013

I'm using Adobe Caslon with Expert Sets to typeset English in an 18th Century style. Unfortunately, some ligatures are missing, specifically ſſl and ſſi. I have drawn my own versions of these using the existing ſſ, ſl and ſi ligatures, but obviously I cannot distribute modified fonts, so it's not possible to pass on these improvements to others.

Hence, it would be good to see these ligatures added to the original fonts.

Without them, there are two options, neither of which is entirely satisfactory:

1. Do nothing. Then, ſſi is typeset as an ſſ ligature followed by i. This just looks ugly.

2. Fake up ligatures by overlaying the corresponding pairs. This works quite well for the upright faces, but for the italic faces it's not so good, as the shapes of the second ſ in the ſſ ligature are different from the shapes of the first ſ in the other two ligatures. This is still better than option 1.

It would be good to see something done about this, as it's a serious flaw: without proper ligatures, there's no way to typeset some words satisfactorily in italics.

Report · Jul 17, 2013

Thanks for you suggestion. We will take it into consideration the next time the fonts are revised. However, keep in mind that the glyphs would only be added to the OpenType fonts. We have stopped the development of Type 1 fonts more than a decade ago. I say this because you mentioned that you're using the Expert Sets.

Report · Jul 17, 2013

Thanks. Yes, I am using the Type 1 version, and it doesn't surprise me that you've stopped developing them.