Figure colon - Stylistic set or Contextual alternate

Ermin Međedović
Ermin Međedović Posts: 107
in Type Design Technique & Theory

Most of my fonts have a figure colon, which I find useful as an alternative to the divide sign, and it also makes time expressions like 16:30 look better.

Until now, I have made it available as a Stylistic Set, but I’m now considering putting it into calt so it would be enabled by default.

Any thoughts or advice on whether this is a good idea or something to avoid?

Answers

  • Matthijs Herzberg
    Matthijs Herzberg Posts: 160
    Often, contextual alts like this cause new problems. Take a sentence like "It says in section 5: 'Lorum Ipsum'." You'd want the colon to remain aligned with text, not figures.
    That said, if you coded it so that the alternate colon is only applied when both succeeded and preceded by a figure, you're probably safe.
  • SCarewe
    SCarewe Posts: 83
    That's how I've seen it done (when it's included), and I think it's safe. It's also done in Apple's San Francisco, if I'm not mistaken.

    I can't think of a context where you wouldn't want the colon to be visually centred between two figures. But yes, restrict it to that exact case – exactly between two figures.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,731
    edited July 29
    I agree that for time expressions this can look better, particularly at larger sizes (e.g. on a phone splash screen, which was the primary use case for Apple’s San Francisco implementation).
    I might not want it in the context of something like Bible verse citations or similar uses in running text, though, since other punctuation may be involved. For example, in the citation Ex. 31:12–17 it would look weird to raise the colon but not also the en dash (presuming lining numerals), so then you start getting into a lot more contextual rules, and the more such rules you introduce the more likely users are to come up with exceptions.

  • SCarewe
    SCarewe Posts: 83
    I would argue that if a font has a figure-sensitive colon (i.e. a ".case" colon) which activates between lining figures, the font will most probably also have other .case glyphs (notably endash, emdash), so the Bible verse example would be solved as well. Of course, this depends on the layout app, but those case-sensitive forms would activate between capitals and lining numerals.

    Wouldn't simply putting all case-sensitive punctuation into a calt rule between lining figures solve the issue?
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,731
    figure-sensitive colon (i.e. a ".case" colon)
    I wouldn’t consider a raised colon for use between numerals to be a .case variant. The colon normatively sits on the baseline, and I wouldn’t expect it to be raised in all-caps settings any more than a comma, semi-colon or period would be.
    Wouldn't simply putting all case-sensitive punctuation into a calt rule between lining figures solve the issue?
    That assumes everyone wants these to always be raised between lining numerals, regardless of the overall text context, i.e. mixed-case vs all-caps. I am wary of that assumption.


  • Erik
    Erik Posts: 20
    John Hudson said:
    For example, in the citation Ex. 31:12–17 it would look weird to raise the colon but not also the en dash (presuming lining numerals), so then you start getting into a lot more contextual rules, and the more such rules you introduce the more likely users are to come up with exceptions.
    SCarewe said:
    I would argue that if a font has a figure-sensitive colon (i.e. a ".case" colon) which activates between lining figures, the font will most probably also have other .case glyphs (notably endash, emdash), so the Bible verse example would be solved as well. Of course, this depends on the layout app, but those case-sensitive forms would activate between capitals and lining numerals.

    Wouldn't simply putting all case-sensitive punctuation into a calt rule between lining figures solve the issue?
    If in Johnʼs example of ⟨Ex. 31:12–17⟩ there was a line break after the en dash (as there was when I viewed his post), would you still want the .case en dash applied? and would the line break not disrupt the context of the calt rule?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,156
    I would also be concerned about the potential for having a normal text colon end up near the special number colon.

    “As it says in Ex. 31:12–17: one should always yadda yadda.”

    I do not want those two colons to be differently positioned.
  • Ermin Međedović
    Ermin Međedović Posts: 107
    Matthijs Herzberg said:
    Often, contextual alts like this cause new problems. Take a sentence like "It says in section 5: 'Lorum Ipsum'." You'd want the colon to remain aligned with text, not figures.
    That said, if you coded it so that the alternate colon is only applied when both succeeded and preceded by a figure, you're probably safe.

    That’s how it is made. The raised colon is substituted only when it’s adjacent to figures, with a figure on both sides. 

  • Ermin Međedović
    Ermin Međedović Posts: 107
    SCarewe said:
    Wouldn't simply putting all case-sensitive punctuation into a calt rule between lining figures solve the issue?

    It is a geometric sans with only two numeral sets: the default figures and .tf. It already has a figure dash, so I guess I can simply extend the calt feature to cover the figure-sensitive punctuation as well.

  • Ermin Međedović
    Ermin Međedović Posts: 107
    Thomas Phinney said:
    “As it says in Ex. 31:12–17: one should always yadda yadda.”

    Good call.

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