I figured this one out by messing around and realizing my stupid mistake.
When working with automatic ligatures I tried doing:
sub 4 5 by 45 ;
This caused error. When my dumb self realized the numbers went as: one, two, three, etc. I tried to do:
sub four five by 45 ;
Still error. So I did:
sub four five by E45;
And it worked. So my basic question is: Why does Font Lab ligature code not like numbers?
You have to use glyph names, not literal characters. In the case of some glyphs, these happen to be the same (A, B, C, a, b, c, etc.), but most glyphs names are not the same as the literal character that you type (e.g., numbers). The other thing is that glyph names may not start with a number (e.g., A1 is allowed, 1A is not).
There are also conventions and recommendations for naming glyphs. You don't have to follow them, but it's usually best unless you have a good reason not to. It can make a difference when, for example, making a PDF that uses your font.
Guidelines here (see section 6): http://sourceforge.net/adobe/aglfn/wiki/AGL%20Specification/
Good reference. Thank you.
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