Is there a standard for OT arrows' trigger?

Eimantas Paškonis

I'm talking about the #calt combinations that invoke the arrows. Naturally, -> or <- lends itself to right/left but what about up and down or diagonal? What about using phrases plus a special char, something like §upleft?

Khaled Hosny

Whatever you chose, don’t make it on by default. -> are two characters; a hyphen-minus and greater than not an arrow, and should remain like that unless the user explicitly asks for something different.

Bhikkhu Pesala

In my opinion, this is something for Autocorrect, not for OpenType features. 

OpenType features can be useful for fractions like 1/4 changing to ¼ etc. 

Khaled Hosny

Even fractions for things like 1/4 should not be on by default. Depending on context, this can very will be first of April not one fourth or even something else. Fractions should be activated by default only when fraction slash is used, e.g. 1⁄4 (this is 1, fraction slash, 4).

Khaled Hosny

For some reason the font used by Typedrawers has an empty glyph for fraction slash and a few other characters, that is just ugly!

John Hudson

In my opinion, this is something for Autocorrect, not for OpenType features. 

Yes. Arrows are characters, not glyph representations of keyboard inputs like -> or phrases.

Adam Jagosz

I've been whining on and on about the the forum font; nobody cares

Matthew Smith

I like @Connor Davenport's approach in Garnett. As other's have suggested, I wouldn't set them as contextual alternates because they tend to be turned on by default. Using a stylistic set is perhaps more appropriate. This is what Connor used:

<- : Left Arrow

-> : Right Arrow

<| : Upward Arrow

|> : Downward Arrow

^\ : North West Arrow

/^ : North East Arrow

\> : South East Arrow

</ : South West Arrow

<-> : Left Right Arrow

Connor Davenport

@Matthew Smith, I'm so glad that you noticed those. It took me so long to come up with a sensible/user-friendly system for the non-left/right arrows 🤯