Ligature exceptions

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chajmke
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Ligature exceptions

Post by chajmke »

Dear forum people,

I already searched this topic in the forum and wasn't successful - maybe it is topic somewhere else, in this case: sorry.

Is it possible to add Ligature "exceptions" somewhere in Mellel? For German, for example, there will be exceptions. So ommit fi in some words, like Zup/fi/nstrument. For InDesign, there is a script doing this job. Would this be possible in Mellel as well?

I guess this is true for English as well. Imagine words like wolflike (the ligature fl would wrong) cufflink (the ligature fl would be wrong)

Thanks for reading (and your reply) :)
DavidH
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Re: Ligature exceptions

Post by DavidH »

Two standing limitations of Mellel make this degree of ligature control difficult to achieve. It makes only a limited number of OpenType features available on an all-or-nothing basis. And its Find and Replace command is blind to character styles, so you can’t automate the removal of unwanted ligatures by setting up ligature free variants of your regular character styles and switching to them where necessary using Find and Replace.

What you could do is construct a Find Set that enables you to find and remove offending mandatory ligatures one by one, You’ll need to construct and store a separate Find expression for each special environment where ligatures need to be removed and put those expressions in what Mellel calls a Find Set. (See the Guide for details on this.) Then each time an inappropriate ligature is found in the text, while it is still selected, uncheck Ligatures manually in the Character Palette and use the Next button in the Find box to move on to the next instance.
chajmke
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Re: Ligature exceptions

Post by chajmke »

Thank you for your detailed answer!

This is not so promising for me (it would mean a lot of rework) - on the other hand it would certainly be an interesting feature.

But there would be one ambiguity: Ligatures are controlled by the character format - so I could insert the corresponding "non-ligature" character format via "Insert - special" and of course the matching text. I'll test this and see how much effort it would take.

I'll have a look at the corresponding feature "Find set. Thanks!
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