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FF Meta Pro st ligature
Posted by John Nolan in
7 Dec 2005 — 5:56am
7 Dec 2005 — 5:56am
I just downloaded the free Meta Pro from Fontshop. Is anyone else surprised that the tied st ligature is a default lig in Meta Pro?
This seems a strange choice for a "workhorse" font, especially since such less obtrusive ligs like fft are discretionary. Is this a mistake?
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7 Dec 2005 — 6:16am
surely you remember these threads, john:
http://typophile.com/node/9473
http://typophile.com/node/9744
it seems this may be a common "problem" with FF fonts?
7 Dec 2005 — 8:26am
"I just downloaded the free Meta Pro from Fontshop"
- I've been on Fontshop website and did not saw any link for a Free Meta Pro font.
7 Dec 2005 — 8:45am
> I’ve been on Fontshop website and did not saw any link for a Free Meta Pro font.
http://www.fontshop.com/features/free.cfm
7 Dec 2005 — 10:04am
I downloaded the free Meta Pro font and opened it in FontLab. The st ligature is indeed included in the liga feature (the standard ligatures). This seems like a mistake to me.
They also included the ij which is (I think) only used in Dutch. Not that it matters since it is indistinguishable from setting an i followed by a j. I think this is normally supposed to be handled like the German double s, not by a ligature feature.
7 Dec 2005 — 10:33am
It could be that they made a special version to demonstrate their range for some of the other ligatures. Maybe? Stephen?
7 Dec 2005 — 12:43pm
Yes, Paul, I remembered that c_t thing, but this is different, as Mark has pointed out: the st lig is part of the standard ligatures feature.
7 Dec 2005 — 1:17pm
I've been told that this is not supposed to be and that it will be looked into. Don't fret fellow typophiles. :^)
7 Dec 2005 — 10:54pm
There are also some hinting bugs - the tops of the c and q overshoot the x-height blue zone, resulting in glitchy rasterization at some common sizes (e.g. 16 ppem, a.k.a 12 point on Windows).
But it's still a nice piece of work.
T
15 Dec 2005 — 4:11pm
The 'st' ligature as "standard" was definitely an oversight and will be fixed in Meta OT and Pro first, with the other offending FontFonts to follow. All future OT FontFonts will have these ligatures in the proper place. Thanks!
15 Dec 2005 — 4:19pm
- I’ve been on Fontshop website and did not saw any link for a Free Meta Pro font.
There's a new free taster font each month. Get on the newsletter list to be alerted.
http://www.fontshop.com/fontfeed/archives/2005/12/new_fontfonts_a.cfm