Interesting Hoefler Text Ligature Bug in SL

An attempt to address problems pointed out in the project white paper in the prereading archive and in parallel on this forum? Enabling imageable composition that is unsupported by character information in application-independent archives is inherently detrimental to information society.

Note that ability to draw typographic ligation without direct depiction onto character codes in a coded character set is the argument advanced again and again and again for the character-glyph model in conventional Modern English composition.

/hh

Hi Tom

It seems that it's one among several problems with the couple Hoefler Text + Snow Leopard.

I will add the description of the ligature problem to my report upon other problem. (ligatures behave well with 10.4.11).

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 13 septembre 2009 15:55:16

(ligatures behave well with 10.4.11).

Supposedly, 10.4 simulates Microsoft GSUB supplementary shaping using Apple MORX supplementary shaping for the output conversion from character codes to glyph codes.

/hh

Various other fonts that do ligatures including Minion Pro and Zapfino seem to work OK.

For clarification of this post so that previous unclarities in posts are prevented:

Output or rendering transform from chacters to glyphs composes correctly in authoring application when working with Adobe Minion Pro and Linotype Zapfino: Yes? No?

Input or referencing transform from glyphs to characters decomposes correctly in application-independent PDF 1.3 archive when working with Adobe Minion Pro and Linotype Zapfino: Yes? No?

/hh

As Hoefler is able to make an existing document unreadable, I think that the problem is completely different than your "fly sodomization exercise"😉

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 13 septembre 2009 16:46:06

As Hoefler is able to make an existing document unreadable, I think that the problem is completely different than your "fly sodomization exercise"

To repeat, while the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts are commonly called complex because more of the drawing is done in character space than in glyph space, the Indic scripts and Arabic are commonly called complex because more of the drawing is done in glyph space than in character space. Typographic ligation is simply the lithmus test of any implementation of the Unicode character-glyph model for the Latin script, that is, if typographic ligation does not function for the implementation then the implementation does not function. This is simple set theory for primary school, and for pensioned French potters -:).

/hh

Henrik Holmegaard wrote:

Why are you bringing such emphasis on the word "complex" which I didn't use in my message ?

If something was wrong in the general ligature treatment, we may assume that it would strike other fonts.

Here we have several different problems with a single font. I would be surprised to learn that there is a link between these problems and your favorite subject 😉

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 13 septembre 2009 20:06:56

Why are you bringing such emphasis on the word "complex" which I didn't use in my message?

Sigh, if you spent time studying technical specifications, which is a useful thing to spend time on when participating in a discussion forum on computing, you would be aware that the technical terms 'simple script' and 'complex script' refer to converting computerised communication into computerised composition when the mapping of characters to glyphs is linear and simple as opposed to when it is non-linear and complex.

/hh

I understand the meaning of complex but don't see the connection with the described problem.

I repeat, I would be surprised if Hoefler is using, for the embedded ligatures, a structure different of the one used in other fonts delivered by Apple.

For those who are bored by the Hoefler behavior under Snow, I put the 'old' version on my idisk.
<http://idisk.me.com/koenigyvan-Public?view=web>
Download
For_iWork:Hoefler Text.dfont.zip
compress the new one (version 6.1d6e1 2009/07/16) from the Finder menu
replace the font itself by the one which will be given after double clicking the downloaded file.

It will bring nothing to your theorical course but maybe it will give a usable workaround.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 13 septembre 2009 21:42:47

The described workaround behaves well !

I was able to open the randy's huge document.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 13 septembre 2009 22:42:44

And Pages maybe unable to open old files using this font.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 14 septembre 2009 09:57:11

The biggest problem I'm having with Hoefler Text under Snow Leopard isn't ligatures, but the extra leading that completely screws up all the layouts... it's like the line spacing is increased 200% or so. I've just downloaded the version you posted, but it doesn't solve this problem. Any other ideas as to workarounds? I've tried saving it as TT, OT, T1 with FontXChange, but without success. What else might I try?