How can I define my own ligatures in lualatex?

Question

Why are my ligatures not working?

\documentclass[12pt,a4page]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[FeatureFile=pytanie.fea,
 Path = /usr/share/fonts/dejavu/,
 Extension=.ttf]{DejaVuSerif}
\begin{document}
ambona amarant żółw flaming i filharmonia.

młot
\end{document}

File pytanie.fea

languagesystem DFLT dflt;
languagesystem latn dflt;
feature liga {
 sub \a \m by \fl;
 sub 0061 by uniF731;
 sub m ł by uni0062;
} liga;

I need convert am to standard ligature f_l, a to unicode char F731, and mł to b.

Answer 1

I can't tell you why the featurefile-based approach isn't working. Fortunately, though, it's not too difficult to write a Lua function and a couple of TeX-side "wrapper" macros (named \myligsOn and \myligsOff) to perform the glyph substitutions directly.

In the code below, I've switched the font from DejaVuSerif to Garamond Premier Pro, as the former doesn't seem to have a glyph at position uniF731.

% !TEX TS-program = lualatex
\documentclass{article}

%% load fontspec package and specify main font
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Garamond Premier Pro}% -- DejaVuSerif has no glyph at pos. F731

%% Lua-side code 
\usepackage{luacode}
\begin{luacode*}
function myligs ( s )
   s = unicode.utf8.gsub ( s , '(\\?)([%a@]+)' , function( backslash, text )
   -- no substitutions inside (La)TeX macros
       if backslash=='' then 
           text = unicode.utf8.gsub (text, 'mł', 'b' )  
           text = unicode.utf8.gsub (text, 'am', 'fl' )  
           text = unicode.utf8.gsub (text, 'a', '\\char"F731' )  
       end
       return backslash .. text
   end)
   return s
end
\end{luacode*}

%% TeX-side code
\newcommand\myligsOn{\directlua{luatexbase.add_to_callback(
      "process_input_buffer", myligs, "myligs")}}
\newcommand\myligsOff{\directlua{luatexbase.remove_from_callback(
      "process_input_buffer", "myligs")}}

\begin{document}

\myligsOn
\small  % Note: The 'a' in '\small' is *not* being converted to '\char"F731'.
mł am a

\myligsOff
mł am a
\end{document}