what happened to ligatures in Pages?

It'd be interesting if it turns out that Apple has switched off smart typographic shaping, leaving simple typographic shaping in the obligatory CMAP Character Map. That is, turned back the clock to TrueType 1.0 for the time being. At least people would not loose information while the mechanics are working on the machinery.

(Ligation in Monotype Baskerville? Ligation in Matthew Carter's Big Caslon is limited to the ligatures used in Anglo-American typography. Academic pressure from e.g. MIT in Cambridge moved the Unicode Technical Committee to include these typographic ligatures as character specifications in the standard character set. They are found in the Alphabetic Presentation Forms block. Since these typographic ligatures are standard character specifications, they can be searched. It's when one wants to compose Goethe that the cultural and commercial assymmetry is apparent.)

hh

in fact, in one of my lectures I explained ligatures by showing Pages and Word side-by-side and their treatment of the exact same input text.

Ligation is font specific. To enable ligation, select Command T for the Font Palette, select a font file in the intelligent composition model of the Unicode Consortium, and select the Typography Palette for that specific intelligent font. To select the Typography Palette for the intelligent font, click the Advanced icon in the Font Palette and select Typography. Microsoft Word for Macintosh 2008 supports ligation in Apple TrueType 2 in OS X 10.4 and OS X 10.5 and Microsoft OpenType ligation in OS X 10.5 - see the Word for Macintosh 2008 online help. Same procedure for Apple Pages 2008.

Be aware that enabling ligation in any Apple application and in any Microsoft application under Apple Mac OS X 10.4 and Apple Mac OS X 10.5 disables searching in the Adobe Portable 'Document' Format. Apple development logged a bug against this in November 2004 and Apple management logged a bug against this in May 2008. If you just want to distribute hardcopy, no problem. If you want to distribute softcopy, it cannot be found using Apple Spotlight or Microsoft Search. This has been elevated to standards level and political level as the situation is not what the enduser expects, as all agree in writing.

With best wishes,

Henrik Holmegaard
technical writer, mag.scient.soc.

In Pages '08 ligatures are completely gone

Surely you can do it in Lucida Grande, no? Plus Baskerville and Big Caslon? Presumably others as well.

It'd be interesting if it turns out that Apple has switched off smart typographic shaping,

Surely you must own Pages, so you can test some of this for yourself and tell us your own results and what you think they mean?.

Can you create the fi fl ligatures requested by the original poster with various Apple fonts? I can also do it with Minion Pro (but not Gill Sans). If the OP cannot do the same, something is wrong with his installation I think.

enabling ligation in any Apple application and in any Microsoft application under Apple Mac OS X 10.4 and Apple Mac OS X 10.5 disables searching in the Adobe Portable 'Document' Format".

This does not appear to be correct for all ligatures and fonts. The pdf documents I make with Pages containing the common ligatures fi and fl, with both Apple fonts and Adobe Minion Pro, seem to be searchable in Adobe Reader for f, i, l, fi, and fl.

This does not appear to be correct for all ligatures and fonts. The pdf documents I make with Pages containing the common ligatures fi and fl, with both Apple fonts and Adobe Minion Pro, seem to be searchable in Adobe Reader for f, i, l, fi, and fl.

It may be that my English is not as good as it might be, for which I humbly apologise, but did I not write that there are typographic ligatures in the international standard character set and did I not also write that fi and fl are implemented in Apple Standard Roman?

There are, then, decompositions for backward compatibility. These are, if memory serves, listed on the Unicode site as they are for other operating system platforms including NeXT. The problem arises for ligated letters that are not necessary in Modern English.

Apple customers are loosing their work and Microsoft customers are loosing their work. It has nothing to do with Apple Pages in particular. It happens in any and all applications that depend on Apple Mac OS X 10.4 and Apple Mac OS X 10.5 to save out Adobe Portable 'Document' Format softcopy.

A custom Unicode API for Apple Pages and a custom ICC API for Apple Pages would not only produce redundant program code, it would also produce the problem that the behaviour of table-based transforms would be more application-dependent than need be.

Never sell to strangers what you yourself are not willing to sell to family and friends. At this point talk of an Apple iBook Store and an Apple iBook Reader are utterly useless. The hardware is a peripheral to the software and the software is badly broken.

Best wishes,

Henrik Holmegaard

<Edited by Moderator>

The problem arises for ligated letters that are not necessary in Modern English.

Thanks for that clarification! I'd recommend that in the future you modify your warnings about pdf searchability to reflect that fact, so that others do not need to correct them.

I would still like to hear from you whether on your machine any of the ligature functions of Pages are working or not, and if they are working, whether you see any evidence that "Apple has switched off smart typographic shaping" as you speculated earlier.

I'd recommend that in the future you modify your warnings about pdf searchability

Dear Thomas,

Thank you for the recommendation.

With best wishes,

Henrik Holmegaard

It is regrettable that you apparently cannot test Pages' ligature behavior yourself at the present time. On my machine it appears that various Latin ligatures which I think require smart shaping are in fact still working correctly in fonts that support them, both those supplied by Apple and one from Adobe.



Exported to pdf format these ligatures are not searchable.

Exported to pdf format these ligatures are not searchable.

Quod erat demonstrandum. As well for Apple authoring applications as for Microsoft authoring applications which means every Macintosh system everywhere. That is both the strength and the weakness of the model Apple has chosen for device independence. Which Apple was told when every Adobe user who chose the Apple ColorSync Workflow option had to pay out of pocket.

Dr Timothy Berners-Lee in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation has said, "Imagine that everything you are typing is being read by the person you are applying to for your first job. Imagine that it's all going to be seen by your parents and your grandparents and your grandchildren as well."

In working on the world wide web, one should carefully consider what one writes, and in particular not place oneself in a position that can be considered counterfactual. This is simply to be seen as advice, since the Apple servers already support ten years of technical threads on device independence and on models for implementing device independence.

By the bye, Jonathan Hoefler has a name that suggests a first, second or third generation Germanic language origin. In this case, following the Classicist fashion in Germany, the name could be correctly spelled Hoefler, or the name could be correctly spelled Höfler. Yvan might have a word on the spelling in Alsace.

With best wishes,
Henrik Holmegaard

Reference:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7299875.stm