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FontCreator Tutorials

Localized Forms – Catalan Punt Volat

written by Erwin Denissen, published June 5, 2019

In Catalan there are words like lletres and estrella that use a “double L”, but there are also words which contain two Ls that each belong to a separate syllable, for example col·legi. In that case a “punt volat” (flying point) is used between two Ls. That point should be centered between the two stems of the Ls, preferably without adding additional space between the two Ls. However by just typing L followed by a “period centered” and another L will add the width of the “period centered”, which is not good.

This tutorial explains how to add a locl feature that adds a contextual lookup that replaces “L periodcentered” with Lmiddledot if followed with another “L”.

Add Localized Forms Feature for Catalan Punt Volat

You can easily add the localized forms feature to your fonts with FontCreator. First ensure that your font contains the required characters.

L, l, periodcentered, Lmiddledot, lmiddledot

If these glyphs are missing, you can add them through the Insert Glyphs dialog. If your font also contains Small Capitals and/or Petite Captials, do ensure it has variants for those as well.

Next, go to the OpenType Designer and click the toolbar item in the upper left corner. Ensure that the Common Localized Forms option is checked.

The OpenType features and lookups are now added to your font as shown above.

You can type preview text to test your features. Be sure you've selected Latin script and Catalan language and enabled the _shaper or the locl feature. You can either type a letter or a slash followed by the glyph name of the letter.

INSTAL·LACIONS paral·lel col·legi il·luminats

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