OpenType feature to transform (c) to ©

Manuel Viergutz

Hello,

I search a OpenType feature to transform (c) to ©

I tested dlig:

sub parenleft c parenright by copyright;

Is this the smartest way with no problems?

George Thomas

If you are going to use it, put it in calt or salt (or both), but not dlig. The copyright symbol is not and never has been a ligature so don't muddy the waters by putting it into a wrong category.

As for no problems, I'm not sure there is an answer for that.

John Hudson

(c) is not equivalent to ©

The copyright symbol © is legally significant in some jurisdictions and circumstances (e.g. in the US for works published before 1 March 1989), and representing it in text as (c) is not adequate. Since OpenType Layout substitutions operate in glyph space, not character space, it isn't appropriate to use them to represent the character sequence (c) with the glyph ©, and this obscures the underlying text encoding. I recommend avoiding such substitutions, and encourage users to employ the correct Unicode character for ©.

Bhikkhu Pesala

Agree with John. This is easily done with Autocorrect in word-processors, and is the default in PagePlus, which I disable because if I type (C) that's what I meant to insert. Maybe it is OK for ordinary users who don't know about Alt 0169 or other shortcuts. 

Andreas Stötzner

What John said. – And for yet another reason one might not want to get (c) substituted by © in every case: if you happen to have an enumeration like (a) (b) (c) (d) … or you have (c) occurring in text in another context/meaning, the OT trick may well corrupt your text and cause trouble.
On the Mac you just hit alt-G and that’s it.

Khaled Hosny

Or even text like “501(c)(3) organization”.

Deleted Account

"Is this the smartest way with no problems? "

I'll actually try to answer your question. It's called a "copyright sign", and anything else is inaccurate and unhelpful. So, obviously, (c), (C) and Copyright have issues with the user wanting to input those very things and not ©.

The smartest way with no problems is vague, but a smart way is sub copyright sign by ©, a "rebus" where the underlying text matches the name of U+00A9. And, because sub copyright sign by © is a contextual alternate, that is the feature it would be smartest to use.

Accidents associated with the intended input of "copyright sign" and not © are of course possible, but if one is smart, when thinking of use-facing issues, one ignores the problems of communicating with type designers, which is about the only time that accident should happen.;)

Theunis de Jong

D. Epar ted: most certainly that is not a smart way. It is neither proper nor suitable. It is not acceptable nor adequate.

"Asserting your copyright signals to readers that .." > "Asserting your ©als to readers that .."

John Hudson

© is a symbol character: it's a text entity in itself, not a representation of a string of other characters, whether those are '(C)', '(c), or 'copyright sign' or, for that matter, 'знак авторского права'. We don't encode the character a as a descriptive string 'Latin lowercase a', and encoding symbol characters in such a way makes no more sense.

Deleted Account

A. You two are not suggesting Anything, go on with no suggestion, as if the “smartest’ thing to do...is nothing.

B. I am suggesting nowhere that a character that is on the keyboard, like “a” would be input that way. Don’t be silly,  if I need to type an a, I type an a. And I’m certainly not suggesting that the Russian word for © is equivalent to the Unicode name of the glyph. 

Again, a rabble of nerd-facing suggestions of nothing makes more sense to you, then why not say nothing. Your ‘smartest’ solution is for users to hunt for input of unrelated glyphs, what we have been forced to do for years. 

Via voice input I am going to say © to my computer (I spoke the words “copyright“ and “sign”, boys, the glyph I sought appeared). I didn’t do it with OT, my os did it with the same result. That is compatible with human activities on the Mac, in English.

It makes no sense, is not acceptable, not proper nor adequate, but it just happened,  again, © © © © © © © ©, and I didn’t have to lift a finger. Jealous?

André G. Isaak

Sometimes nothing *is* the smartest thing to do.

Most word processors offer an autoreplace feature which can convert (c) into © if so desired, and such features actually replace (c) with a single character rather than a single glyph, which is a far more desirable solution.

Moreover, if I were typing a list containing (a), (b), (c) and ended up with a copyright symbol, I’d probably end up wasting a lot of time hunting through my application preferences looking for some obscure autoreplace/autocorrect feature I’d missed rather than thinking to turn off calt or dlig.

André

Thierry Blancpain

We once were young and foolish and thought this was a smart idea, too. So we did it for (c), for TM, and for other things. We still get support requests from the versions we sold years ago with this annoying behavior. It’s a bad idea, in any shape or form.

John Hudson

A. You two are not suggesting Anything, go on with no suggestion, as if the “smartest’ thing to do...is nothing.

Who is saying do nothing? Several suggestions have been put forward for ways in which to enter the copyright symbol character at the character level. And yes, as you point out, voice input is another way. Given just how many options exist to input the © character (I just hit option+g on my Mac keyboard), it hardly seems necessary to suggest some particular one in response to the original post, which was about using OTL to do a substitution at the glyph level, and not a general query about how to get © in text. Pointing out why the glyph level isn't the appropriate place to solve character encoding isn't saying do nothing.

Deleted Account

You sure it is not a general query about how to get © in text, that's fine. I'm pretty sure it's merging traffic John. 

“Who is saying do nothing? “

Um, white males who speak, read and write English, have long technical experience, few or no effects of age, or other handicap, who don’t use much VR and don’t apparently input non-keyboard characters in mobile devices often.

Not entirely sure how you are using "nothing" though. And the original poster is saying nothing too. So it’s still vague where the "smarts' should be, other than not here.

"Pointing out why the glyph level isn't the appropriate place to solve character encoding isn't saying do nothing."

It is John, if I, and everyone else already know that. It places a low bar on discussion, where people keep writing that (c) for © is a bad idea. That's a bad idea.

If You are just typing cmmd-g, Then: that’s the ‘smartest’ thing to do. But that's a bad idea that's just old.

If You, are just Placing your cursor in the location where you wish to insert a special character; Activating the numeric key pad on the right of the keyboard by pressing Num Lock (upper right of keyboard)... While pressing down the ALT key, type the four-digit code on the numeric key pad at the right edge of the keyboard. Then: that’s the ‘smartest’ thing to do. But that's a bad idea that's just old, too. 

There is a way besides that. What we’ve got, is most certainly not a smart way, for everyone. It is neither proper nor suitable, for everyone. It is not acceptable nor adequate, for everyone. If it WERE, I wouldn’t have had the privilege of going to the south of France 20 years ago to meet with MS and other font developers on this very subject, nor would I have been here.

Here, after which I will no longer call on you all for input, is a list of all of the dictation known at this date (from a post about a post about an Apple Discussion post):

• apostrophe  '
• open bracket  [
• close bracket  [
• open parenthesis  (
• close parenthesis  )
• open brace  {
• close brace  }
• open angle bracket  <
• close angle bracket  >
• colon  :
• comma  ,
• dash  -
• ellipsis  …
• exclamation mark  !
• hyphen  -
• period, point, dot, or full stop  .
• question mark  ?
• quote  ”
• end quote  ”
• begin single quote  '
• end single quote  '
• semicolon  ;
• ampersand  &
• asterisk  *
• backslash  \
• forward slash  /
• caret  ^
• center dot  ·
• large center dot  •
• degree sign  °
• hashtag or pound sign  #
• percent sign  %
• underscore  _
• vertical bar  |
• dollar sign  $
• cent sign  ¢
• pound sterling sign  £
• euro sign  €
• yen sign  ¥
• cross-eyed laughing face  XD
• frowny face  :-(
• smiley face  :-)
• winky face  ;-)
• copyright sign  ©
• registered sign  ®
• trademark sign  ™
• equals sign  =
• greater than sign  >
• less than sign  <
• minus sign  -
• multiplication sign  x
• plus sign  +

It’s wrong, some of the words don’t match the matching, e.g. “parenthesis” never works and “paren” does always, (thankfully).

If such a thing exists for Windows or Android, please mail me off this forum if you like.

Khaled Hosny

I have an issue being categorized as a white English speaker.

John Hudson

David, the original post was explicitly about using a GSUB feature, so clearly not everyone already knows.

Deleted Account

Yes John. I responded with use of a GSUB feature, which I think everyone else knows, but no one else did. This negativism implied that nothing is the answer for everyone, I don't agree with that. And... cmmd-g is not a gsub, so if the original post was explicitly about using a GSUB feature, I immediately discarded that answer.