Typophile

Automatic Ligatures for MS Word

hessenkassel

I have been using the Unifraktur Maguntia font in Microsoft Word, and had this idea to use a macro to automatically insert ligatures and special characters such as the long s. Does anyone know if this has been done before and if there is already such a tool in existence? David Manthey used the same idea on his 18th century Caslon font:
http://www.orbitals.com/self/ligature/ligature.htm

One of the nice things about Unifraktur Maguntia is that it includes all the necessary ligatures and historic characters. Here is some more information:
http://unifraktur.sourceforge.net/maguntia.html

jafo

Since said macro would be nothing more than a long sequence of search and replace actions, why not just record it yourself?

A much better solution would be to use an app that understands OpenType, so that it can do it for you automagically. I hear that InDesign and current versions of Word have the necessary smarts, and I know that XeTeX does, so you have options.

Jens Kutílek

Which version of Word are you using? Word 2010 and newer can use automatic OpenType ligatures. The usage of ſ can’t be automated (at least in German) because the rules are too complex.

hessenkassel

That must be the problem then; I was using the 2007 version. Using a different app that supports OpenType would help a lot, even if I would still have to manually change some things.

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