Reasonableness of idea 'L apostrophe → Lcaron' ligature

Grzegorz Luk (gluk)

in work with my new poster contextual typeface I found many L'A in Italian language.

I made contextual  'Lcaron before A' for Slovak language.
My first, simplest idea was ligature replacing
  'L apostrophe → Lcaron'
  'L quotesingle → Lcaron'

  ...

now I'm thinking about the potential problems of such a solution (language system etc.)

Andreas Stötzner

Lcaron is a letter of its own and it is no good idea to mess it up with the sequence of two other characters L apostrophe. The slovak capital caron also looks usually different than the general apostrophe. The L’A sequence can be dealt with by suitable kerning, so why make things more complicated? If the details of L and A are to change in that special case, a simple ligature L_apostrophe_A might do. But glyph substitution is not meant to spoil the correct encoding of text.

Grzegorz Luk (gluk)

Andreas Stötzner said:

[...] The L’A sequence can be dealt with by suitable kerning, so why make things more complicated? [...]

Thank You for tips. First let me explain a bit. I work on poster typeface with contextual alternates and diacritics support.

Andreas Stötzner said:

 If the details of L and A are to change in that special case, a simple ligature L_apostrophe_A might do.

"simple" ligature in my case of contextual, diacritic alternates most probably quickly turns into a nightmare of bunch of ligatures

I know, it's not best idea to replace 'L apostrophe → Lcaron', but was simple solution for my problem  as far as I know, OpenType features don't spoil the correct encoding of text... or?

finally, because of the different look I leave 'Lcaron' for Slovakian and most probably will create extra contextual alternate for L'A (with more space between)

Yves Michel

Nice font! Good luck!

Adam Twardoch

If you want to be 100% safe, you can do an L_quoteright ligature that looks the same. This way, if the font goes to PDF without any Unicode values, the PDF viewer will be able to parse the glyph names and rebuild the text. Very nice design! 

Grzegorz Luk (gluk)

@Yves Michel @Adam Twardoch  thank you

Adam Twardoch said:

[...] you can do an L_quoteright ligature that looks the same. This way, if the font goes to PDF without any Unicode values, the PDF viewer will be able to parse the glyph names and rebuild the text.

yes, PDF viewer is potential problem. I did it using contextual alternate 'L_before_quoteright_A'. I also had to do:

•  'L_after_L_before_quoteright_A'
•  'L_after_Y_before_quoteright_A'

but it made it easy to blend into mine contextual font and potential new stylistic alternates (like LL'A chain below)

Adam Jagosz

Cool that you disambiguated Lcaron from L_quoteright with the different spacing.

I'm not so sure about that L cut from both sides. Starts to lose its integrity and remind something from a Math Kangaroo contest riddle!

Grzegorz Luk (gluk)

Adam Jagosz said:

[...] I'm not so sure about that L cut from both sides. [..]

diagonal cut lines parallel to AV are part of the style of this font

Vasil Stanev

Apparently Slovaks use the caron also in place of a comma in handwriting. Compare the video thumbnail to what is written on the board inside the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9DDtcfjM-U

Alex Visi

Vasil Stanev said:

Apparently Slovaks use the caron also in place of a comma in handwriting. Compare the video thumbnail to what is written on the board inside the video.

Which is probably why the shape is closer to an acute (half caron) rather than a comma, which often looks too complex up there.

Grzegorz Luk (gluk)

@Vasil Stanev @Alex Visi thank you for tips about Lcaron. Finally I made caron in almost "half-acute" style but in compromise with my font style (and of course separated from quoteright problem) So it look finally

Alex Visi

@Grzegorz Luk (gluk), I think your solution is decent.

For the record, it’s not always simplified, but more often than not. Spacing and size is another difference, apart from the shape. Here are some examples from Czech foundries (Storm, Suitcase, Superior):