Some questions:
1) I'm curious, why do you need "as many ligatures as possible"?
2) How is Hoefler Text "intense"?
3) What's the "style" that the Greek font has to match?

Mrs Eaves, Mantinia (all-caps) and Sophia (also all-caps) have a lot of ligatures.

Probably the font with the most ligatures is Process's new Lingua:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/processtype/lingua/
And the great thing is they're linguistically aware.

There's also another font with many (and I think somewhat linguistic) ligatures - I don't remember what it was called, but I do remember it won a "Carter prize" either and the TDC or the Morisawa type design competition like 2-3 years ago. The designer was French, I think.

Storm: just email him.

hhp

Probably the font with the most ligatures is Process's new Lingua:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/processtype/lingua/
And the great thing is they're linguistically aware.

Excuse me for taking this thread on a tangent, but I don't believe the ligatures in Lingua actually are linguistically aware. They are ligatures of the most commonly occuring letter sequences in a particular language, but letter frequency has nothing to do with linguistics. This is especially true for a language like English that employs etymological spelling and in which the same sequence of letters can represent multiple pronunciations. In order to make the claim that a font is linguistically aware, I think you would need to do a lot more than count letter pair frequency. For example, you would need to vary the form of ligatures for the same sequence of letters according to pronunciation, such that, for example, you would get different ligatures for the sequence <g,h> in 'ghetto' and 'enough'. Of course, this is not something that a font can do by itself without intervention either by a user or by a dictionary engine.

In order for a font to be linguistically aware, it helps if the writing system is linguistically aware. The Latin script applied to the English language is almost entirely conventional, and largely blind to all aspects of linguistics except historical orthographics.

> letter frequency has nothing to do with linguistics.

?
Maybe we're not on the same terminological wavelength...

I think letter-sequence frequency has a lot more to do with the linguistics of the "written" word than does pronunciation, which is in fact tangential to readability: the fact that "ough" can be pronounced seven different ways doesn't preclude the benefit of having a ligature for it. The benefit of having ligatures that are based on frequency is simply that a typesetter is given more opportunities to apply ligatures!

Now, if you mean that the typographic rendering of parts of a word should ideally depend on what the whole word is, then I most certainly agree - but yes, that would take some very heavy pre-processing and OT work to implement - and it doesn't mean Lingua's ligatures are NOT linguistically aware (just less than the ideal).

hhp

Many ligatures? try that one.
http://www.typofonderie.com/alphabets/view/LeMondeLivreClassic

Download the PDF for the JBW set at the bottom of this page. Page 17 shows Jannon OT's character set.

If you can't use OpenType, then you should probably contact Storm. I'm pretty sure you'd get most of the glyphs in the Type 1 versions, but I don't know.

One odd thing: the swash font, with swash endings and such, is only available as a Type 1 font.

If you are using InDesign, there is a Glyph Pallet that shows all the characters in a selected font.

JF, you just reminded me, the Classica font at Presence Typo has an add-on called Prestige which features hundred of alternates, ligatures, etc.:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/presencetypo/prestige/

Hrant, you right.
Think about Aspect too (OpenType) from http://www.typography.net/

I think letter-sequence frequency has a lot more to do with the linguistics of the "written" word than does pronunciation, which is in fact tangential to readability...

We are indeed on different 'terminological wavelengths'. I'm using terminology correctly and you are not.

Many linguists -- probably the majority -- don't consider writing to be linguistic at all. Writing systems have a conventional, learned relationship to language(s), that is in no way dependent upon features of language. This is why most linguists simply ignore writing. There is a small number of linguists who have developed an interest in writing, but they generally consider writing systems as independent subjects of study, not as part of linguistics. [The name for this area of study is grammatology (although that term has also be co-opted by Derrida for a different purpose).] In short, there is no 'linguistics of the written word'.

> there is no 'linguistics of the written word'

I can accept your terminology. And I put forth that linguistics is a retarded field! I think people like Coulmas have said as much. Your description reminds me of chirographic type designers...

The ligatures in Lingua are useful largely because Olson based them on language. If there's a better term (and I mean better to me, as opposed to some insular academics) than "linguistically-aware" I'd love to use that instead.

hhp

The ligatures in Lingua are useful largely because Olson based them on language.

No, he based them on orthography, i.e. the conventional spelling of a language in a particular script. Since all scripts are essentially language-independent -- English can be written in Hangul without much difficulty --, the determination of things like letter frequency must be understood as a function of orthography, not of language itself.

This isn't a case of esoteric academic terminology: this is a sincere attempt to accurately describe the relationship of spoken and written language so that the latter can be meaningfully discussed. I agree with Coulmas that most linguists neglect writing too much, but neither he nor other grammatologists such as Daniels and Bright, would advocate the kind of careless terminology that you want to employ. I've corresponded with Daniels, and he is very picky about terminology.

interesting english isn't written very well in cyrillic "kheppij" just doesn't sound the same to me as "happy" (on another tangent a friend of mine had a english phrase book written for Russians in the cyrillic alphabet, it's no wonder they have such strong accents speaking english, we had many good laughs at "ken ijou tel mij ver ai kan get maj kher kat?")
if it makes you feel any better, hrant, linguistics doesn't cover the art of speech either, just "language" totally separate from its applications. at least that's what i understood from reading "Language Shock" by Michael Agar.

english isn't written very well in cyrillic

No, English isn't written very well in the Russian orthography, i.e. using the conventional relationship of letters to phonemes as employed for the Russian language when written in the Cyrillic script. This is another example of the confusion of script, language and orthography. English is written perfectly well in the Cyrillic script if you adjust the conventional relationship of letters so that they correspond to English phonemes: then you would have a Cyrillic orthography for English, just as you have Cyrillic orthographies for many non-Russian, non-Slavic languages.

very true. so why do we have so many scripts then? how come everyone doesn't just write in IPA symbols?

We have so many scripts because we have so many cultures. Writing and reading are cultural activities, not simply functional ones. Also, the IPA symbols were never intended for immersive reading of continuous text, and many are ill-suited to both writing and reading. IPA is useful for accurately transcribing precise phonetic notation of human speech, which is a very different activity from producing and consuming literature.

> IPA symbols were never intended for immersive reading of continuous
> text, and many are ill-suited to both writing and reading.

That's putting it midly. The IPA is a readability quagmire.

hhp