Word 2007 and Ligatures Created in VOLT

Areleos14 June 2009 · 02:47

I recently finished a font I have been working on for some time as I had to find a way of combining characters as ligatures. When I found VOLT I was excited. I finished the process of making ligatures and shipped the font. I then Installed it and tried it on Word 2007.

The Ligatures don't work. None what so ever. Is there a reason for this? Does Word not support the ligatures made with VOLT?

The font was created using Font Creator 5.6 if that makes a difference.

Is there anything I can do, maybe a program or add-in I can download to resolve this issue?

Thank you.

John Hudson14 June 2009 · 15:01

Word does not support Latin script ligatures because it does not call the function in the Uniscribe shaping engine that implements the OT ligature features.

Areleos15 June 2009 · 00:19

Is there a free word processor you recommend that allows for OT ligatures?

Theunis de Jong15 June 2009 · 05:37

Try OpenOffice (don't know if it already supports them, it has been the topic of a few discussions).

Thomas Phinney17 June 2009 · 00:05

The current version of OpenOffice does not support ligatures, or any other OpenType typographic goodies. It does at least have kerning on by default, though, unlike Word.

Cheers,

ebensorkin18 June 2009 · 02:31

Nice distinction Thomas!

Thomas Phinney18 June 2009 · 12:31

I should clarify that I was talking about what OpenOffice does for western languages. Like Word, it may very well enable all sorts of things where required for support of complex writing systems... I don't know.

John Hudson18 June 2009 · 22:57

OpenOffice does provide pretty good complex script support, using either local system layout engines or ICU depending on platform. I've found a few editing hiccups, but the layout results are decent.

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