I don't know if this is exactly what you mean, since I dont know about the "x_x" convention, but InDesign has preferences where you can choose if all ligatures in the font should come automatically, or not.

So if I type "flow" - then there would automatically be a ligature instead of f and l.

EDIT: Probably you were talking about something else more technical, I guess… =)

Paul,

I'm not quite sure what you mean. I've never heard that arbitrary ligatures would work in Type 1 fonts.

For Type 1 fonts with Adobe Standard Encoding, the two standard ligatures "fi" and "fl" will work as ligatures if they are named with the names used by the Adobe Standard Encoding itself (i.e. "fi" and "fl" rather than "f_i" and "f_l"), simply because they always have been part of the Adobe Standard Encoding.

A.

BTW, this is the reason why FontLab Studio 5's STANDARD.NAM file has the old-style names "fi" and "fl" for exactly those two ligatures. Names for all other ligatures should be formed using the underscore convention ("f_f", "f_f_i" etc.) but for these two, the "fi" and "fl" names without the underscore are probably better if you generate your fonts as both OpenType and Type 1.

As usual, I simply recommend following the FontLab Studio 5 STANDARD.NAM practices of glyph naming and encoding unless there is really a good reason not to. Note that in FontLab Studio 5.0.2, the naming was updated (see http://fontlab.com/The-News/Announcements/FontLab-Studio-5.0.2/ for details) and I recommend all FontLab Studio 5 users to get the update.

A.

Paul,
Do you mean they load without the liga feature being written for them? or do you mean they only load automatically with that syntax in the feature code? As Adam says, fl and fi are standard and should load in any case.

ChrisL

adam, last night i was testing this hypothesis just a bit with a font that had an ll ligature. i named the glyph l_l, generated a PST1 font (for Windows), installed the font, opened InDesign, selected preset text, selected the font i had just installed, and presto! the l_l ligatures were inserted without any OpenType programming. The ligatures persited even when i unchecked the ligatures option.
I believe this is the source of the problem with some postscript fonts automatically substituting discretionary ligatures when they are not wanted (as has been documented elsewhere on these forums): they just exist in the font and InDesign calls them when they are named c_t & s_t.

Yes, you're right. It's a feature or a bug, depending on your perspective and which fonts you're using. :/

T

It’s a feature or a bug, depending on your perspective and which fonts you’re using.

That's how i looked at it. So is Adobe planning on fixing/changing this? Can you say? I'd just like to know what to expect in the future...

I can't say what we're going to do. My preference would probably be to restrict the behavior to the five f-ligatures and leave it at that. Plus maybe Th. :)

T

adam, last night i was testing this hypothesis just a bit with a font that had an ll ligature. i named the glyph l_l, generated a PST1 font (for Windows), installed the font, opened InDesign, selected preset text, selected the font i had just installed, and presto! the l_l ligatures were inserted without any OpenType programming.

That's weird, I did exactly the same thing and it did not work here.

A.

I'm using InD CS1... Maybe they changed it for other versions?

I noticed this when I was working on Grad (OT-CFF). I hadn't added any features, but the ligatures all worked (whether or not I wanted them to). I used the x_x naming convention. After I added the features to specify liga, dlig, etc., they worked correctly, of course.