Is there a standard for OT arrows' trigger?

Eimantas Paškonis
Eimantas Paškonis Posts: 91
in Type Design Technique & Theory
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?
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Comments

  • Khaled Hosny
    Khaled Hosny Posts: 302
    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
    Bhikkhu Pesala Posts: 210
    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
    Khaled Hosny Posts: 302
    edited December 2018
    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
    Khaled Hosny Posts: 302
    For some reason the font used by Typedrawers has an empty glyph for fraction slash and a few other characters, that is just ugly!
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
    I've been whining on and on about the the forum font; nobody cares ;)
  • Matthew Smith
    Matthew Smith Posts: 99
    edited January 2019

    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
    Connor Davenport Posts: 36
    @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 🤯

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