Custom Ligatures not Working

[Xcolibri]

Hi,

In my font, I want to have custom ligatures, replacing e.g. the word STAM with an icon. That way, I can use text in a .csv file as input for Data Merge and that text is replaced with the specific icon automatically. Saves me alot of time compared to placing the icon manually.

I'm new to font edits. But the glyph insertion together with the ligature lookup table seems to work. Both in FontForge and on https://fontdrop.info/, I can type STAM to see an icon instead. In Affinity Publisher, that does not work however. Other standard ligatures like ff / fi work. I do think I correctly saved the new ligature in the standard "liga" lookup table.

Publisher does recognize the glyph, it shows up in the glyph browser. It does not replace the ligature STAM though, the text remains.

Uploading both the OpenType font and the FontForge project (which should not matter as the generated font worked on FontDrop, but in case you want to explore).

What am I doing wrong?
Or is this feature not supported? As a workaround, I can replace some of the glyphs instead of having ligatures, but it's less good as a solution because it's easier for me to have e.g. APPLE replaced with an apple icon instead of overwriting an exotic glyph.

Thanks!

- Roland

KomikaSunsetServeOS.otf KomikaSunsetServe.sfd

[Hangman]

Hi @Xcolibri and welcome to the forums,

If I type STAM and apply your font it gives me this...

[Xcolibri]

Thanks fo your quick reply, Hangman! That's reassuring, appreciated, it's as it should be (the icon looks off, but that was just for testing).

Now I am clueless though. When I type STAM in my font, it stays STAM. I did enable the "Standard Ligatures" under Typography.
Any idea where I need to look? I tried different spelling languages, font sizes, decorations, etc.
Or is that possibly a Mac vs Windows thing?

[kenmcd]

Kinda surprised that it does work on Windows as it is now.
But...
Your replacement glyph should be named S_T_A_M not STAM.

So your liga feature code should look like this:

feature liga {
# GSUB feature: Standard Ligatures
# Lookups: 1

  sub S T A M by S_T_A_M;

} liga;

Give this font a try and see if it works on your Mac: KomikaSunsetServeOSAF.zip
The glyph has been renamed, and the feature code adjusted for this.
It is renamed to KomikaSunsetServeOSAF so you can install it at the same time.

Note: you may want to make your text for the replacements harder to type accidentally - e.g. make it [STAM] or whatever.
Otherwise you may have issues with unexpected substitutions.

[Xcolibri]

I'm actually on Windows, I assumed Hangman is on Mac due to his signature.

Anyway, it works now - thanks so much! This was my first visit to this forum, so I had no idea what to expect, but this helped me tremendously after hours of unsuccessful attempts today. Really appreciate that I immediately tried to reproduce this success with another glyph and it works like a charm. Yay!