long-s

Feature requests, and in-depth discussions of features and the way Mellel works

Moderators: Eyal Redler, redlers, Ori Redler

Post Reply
Hans-Reinhard Koch
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 98
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2005 5:59 pm
Location: Bonn Germany

long-s

Post by Hans-Reinhard Koch »

Both in old English and old German there two sorts of lower case s letters: The long s which is used ai the beginning and inside a word a short s used at word endings (old Greek also has two forms of sigma for the same purpose). Many opentype fonts have a "longs" at position 017F. But I do not know how to access it from the keybord. There should be an automatic glyph substitution depending on context. Is this a matter of font definition or of Mellels handling the font? I do not know how this is handled in Greek typing? What can be done?
Hans-Reinhard Koch, Bonn, Germany
eleuteruiz
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 82
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2005 4:43 pm

Post by eleuteruiz »

I can get this done using an OpenType enabled font (excuse me if this is not the exact term, I mean a font which has extra OT features like long S), and selecting Character Appearances >OpenType > Historical Forms.

Is that what you mean?

Otherwise, there is always the possibility to create a custom keyboard with Ukelele or something like that.

Hope it helps.
Eleuterio
Hans-Reinhard Koch
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 98
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2005 5:59 pm
Location: Bonn Germany

Still don't get it

Post by Hans-Reinhard Koch »

I can get this done using an OpenType enabled font (excuse me if this is not the exact term, I mean a font which has extra OT features like long S), and selecting Character Appearances >OpenType > Historical Forms.
Hallo Eleuteruiz, Thanks for your help. I still do not get it.

I have tried the Latin Modern Roman (open Type) Font, which I use a lot and several other opentype fonts that all have a long s at position 017F. I have checked the historical forms, historical ligatures and contextual alternates of the opentype pop up in the Character appearance palette. Still, there is no key combination with which I can get a long s. Can you explain how to do it?

The only way to get at the long s is with the "Edit > special characters" command. But that is a bit uncomfortable, when I type longer passages, where I want to use the long s.

I would really expect to get an automatic context-dependent substitution of a long s whenever I type any letter after an s and a short s when a blank or punctuation mark follows.

Please help!

Hans-Reinhard
Hans-Reinhard Koch, Bonn, Germany
eleuteruiz
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 82
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2005 4:43 pm

Post by eleuteruiz »

Well, here sombody else will have to give help.

With Garamond Premier Pro I get the long 's' by selecting OpenType feature 'historical forms'. BUT in fact, it shows all of them as long s, not just the last 's' in a word. I never use this feature at all, so I don't know how it is supposed to work.

Curiously, other fonts like Lucida Grande, which do have a long 's' located also at 017F, do not work with this feature in Mellel. Here again, I don't know why.

So, summing up:
- I don't know if this feature in Mellel does at all what you need (autom. replacement of long s only when at end of word).
- I don't know why some fonts produce a change using 'historical forms' feature and others don't.

Besides,
- Instead of using "Edit>special characters" I would rather make a custom keyboard with something like Ukelele (free) where I can locate this long s in a simple keystroke.

Maybe someone else can give another hint...
Eleuterio
rpcameron
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 980
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2005 12:48 am
Location: IE, CA, USA

Post by rpcameron »

The old-style "S" is defined in the Historical Forms table, however it does not have any contextual rules attached to it (or so it appears). Also, since Mellel (as of yet) does not allow for alternate glyph insertion on command, you are left with two options:
  1. Use only the old-style "S", or the regular "S", but not mix the two.
  2. Use a font that has a contextual rule for historical figures that uses the regular "S" in final position, and the old-style figure in others. (I imagine this also may be possible to add your own rules to the font file, and use the same logic that determines which sigma is used in Greek.)
  3. Create a style variation for final "S" that does not have the historical forms selected. Then, switch to this variation for each final "S" you encounter. It's cumbersome, but still gets the job done.
Unless I am missing something else, these seem to be only solutions I could come up with.
— Robert Cameron
Post Reply