I noticed that many Adobe Std fonts include localized code for Turkish. For example, we find the following 'liga' feature in Optima Std Roman (as interpreted by FL5):
<div>feature liga { # Standard Ligatures
script latn; # Latin
</div><div> lookup liga4 {
</div><div> sub f i by fi;
</div><div> } liga4;
</div><div> lookup liga5 {
</div><div> sub f l by fl;
</div><div> } liga5;
</div><div> language TUR exclude_dflt; # INVALID LANGUAGE TAG 'TUR' - use 'TRK' instead
</div><div> lookup liga5;
</div><div>} liga;</div>
Considering the fact that Std fonts from Adobe don’t actually include Idotaccent, Gbreve, gbreve, Scedilla, or scedilla (i.e. characters needed to support Turkish), is there any actual *benefit* to including this localization? Or is this simply someone blindly adding this because they’ve seen it done elsewhere?
Comments
Adobe's OpenType Development Kit Changes notes "changed wrong language tag TUR to TRK" somewhere before 24 September, 2003. (https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/opentype/afdko/FDKReleaseNotes.txt)
feature liga { # Standard Ligatures
The old Type 1 version had those characters, so the OpenType version gets them as well.
But it could also be deliberate. I do not recall being involved in any decision on this, but it wouldn't have necessarily had my input. Or I may just have forgotten as it was over 15 years ago.
So, why do this deliberately? Well, people sometimes set Turkish (and other languages) even with fonts that do not fully support them, as long as they support the script. Having a few things work better in such cases is not a bad thing.
Seeing as a failed distinction between the dotted and dotless i in digital fonts has resulted in at least one fatality, that makes it seem like a good idea to me. https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1017243/cellphone-localisation-glitch (I talked about this case in a presentation at Typo Berlin in 2008, possibly with a better link at the time.)