Is it possible to make my own ligatures?

Question

I know that latex supports some ligatures like 'ffi', 'ffj' etc but there are many that latex doesn't have. Here is a list of ligatures that I want to do. Does anyone know how to do these?

Please don't change font. Use Computer Modern. Thank you very much.

Such constructions come by way of the font designer. TeX can only make use of what is provided in the font. If the font doesn't supply the alternate ligatures, then they won't be available. — Steven B. Segletes, Oct 09 '20 at 19:23
You can download Computer Modern Unicode and create your own ligatures with fontforge — DG', Oct 09 '20 at 19:28
Do I need to learn METAPOST or METAFONT or something to do my one ligatures? — sigsegv, Oct 10 '20 at 09:01
adding a new ligature glyph is like re-drawing the shape of Z it is a font change so incompatible with the requirement not to change the font. It would of course be theoretically possible to design a font based on computer modern but containing more of the historic ligatures, but that's mostly off topic here and few people here have font design experience. — David Carlisle, Oct 10 '20 at 09:07
Even though you don't want to change the font, these are effectively font properties you are asking to change. If you want a font which implements many of these ligatures, see the Junicode font (now called JuniusX) https://psb1558.github.io/Junicode-New/ — Alan Munn, Oct 11 '20 at 15:09

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 11 '20 at 15:03

You can imitate some of these ligatures by adjusting the kerning with, for instance, the technique Ulrike Fischer explains at https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/312160/. E.g.,

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\directlua{
 fonts.handlers.otf.addfeature{
    name = "newlig",
    type = "kern",
    data = {
      ["O"] = { ["O"] =  -450 , ["C"] =  -450 , ["G"] =  -450 },
    },
  }
}
\setmainfont{CMU Serif}
\begin{document}
BOOK OC OG
{\addfontfeature{RawFeature=+newlig}
  BOOK OC OG}
tt t\kern -.13em t
\end{document}

However, the result is crowded and displeasing, because the O of Computer Modern is narrow and the bottom of the t curves up steeply. The ligatures which interest you have their natural home amid the more spacious proportions of a Renaissance typeface. Because the character of the whole typeface, not individual glyphs only, needs to be considered when adding a ligature, the project is best left to professional type designers.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 09 '20 at 19:24

1

I don't think this is possible, since ligatures are a feature of the font.

answered Oct 09 '20 at 19:24

gmvh

345

3

You certainly can't construct the combined glyphs in TeX; also the ligtable describing the ligatures comes from the font metrics. Original TeX can't even adjust the ligtable. Can luaTeX? It should be able. – Donald Arseneau Oct 09 '20 at 20:15

Is it possible to make my own ligatures?

2 Answers2