The golden ligatures collection of Private Use Area code points for ligatures.
This collection of documents contains pairings of some ligatures with code points in the Unicode Private Use Area.
There is presently a policy of not adding any further ligature characters to regular Unicode.
However, as there are some situations where a set of such ligature characters would be useful, here are some Private Use Area code points for ligatures, provided in the hope of being helpful to end users of the Unicode system who might like to have a list of code points for such ligatures.
These lists, the code points being entirely the choice of the present author, are published by the present author. The code points chosen are only as consistent amongst end users as end users choose to make them. These code points are not a "standard". They are simply provided on the basis that a list is better than no list, in that the existence of a list will hopefully encourage interest in these ligature characters as part of our typographic heritage and hopefully help in any efforts to computerise ligature characters being as portable as possible.
Readers considering using these code points are asked to note that there are alternative, arguably more modern, ways to encode ligatures in documents using codes from the regular Unicode system and some types of fount files in conjunction with software written for the purpose. The key advantage of those methods is that text can then be spell checked and words can be sorted into alphabetical order. However, there are situations, such as the unavailability of those methods in a particular location or of simply wishing to be able to insert a ligature symbol directly from a fount where the application is simply to send a page of text to a printer and produce a page of fine printing which includes the use of ligature characters, or to codify the printing characters used in, say, a piece of 18th Century English printing, where the use of a specific code point for each ligature character can be of advantage.
Please note that text coded using the code points which are set out in these documents could, in principle, in the future, be automatically processed by specially written software so as to produce text in that other format if at some time in the future those other methods are widely available and it is desired to avoid wasting any effort which someone may have taken to encode a piece of text using these golden ligatures collection code points.
However, if this set of code points becomes used for the encoding of the typographical details of historical printed text, then perhaps there may be found to be advantage in continuing to use well into the future a method of encoding which actually relates each code point used in a Unicode plain text file on a computer to each piece of metal type which was used by the person who set the type for the printed text many years ago.
Whichever way the expressing of ligatures in computerized representations of text proceeds into the future, as of the date of this document, it appears to the present author that this set of code points is useful to some end users of the Unicode system.
The one to one mapping of code points in the Private Use Area of the Unicode system to sorts in use in print shops of days gone by also has its appeal as art.
William Overington
Saturday 1 June 2002
List of available documents, some added after the above date, please see the dates on the individual documents.
Some Private Use Area code points for ligatures.
Some more Private Use Area code points for ligatures.
Some additional Private Use Area code points for ligatures.
Some experimental art Private Use Area code points for ligatures.
Some further Private Use Area code points for ligatures.
Some Private Use Area code points for ligatures for a science fiction story.
The above linked document was published on 20 July 2002. Since that time I have learned how to make fonts and have published a number of fonts. Amongst those fonts is Chronicle Text, which implements all of the science fiction ligatures in a black letter font. Chronicle Text also implements various other ligatures within the Private Use Area.
The science fiction ligatures and various other ligatures are also implemented in the Private Use Area of the Quest text font.
The fonts are available at the following web page.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/fonts.htm
End of the supplementary note of 10 September 2005.
The following documents are not about ligatures, yet are included within this index as they are about Private Use Area code points and may perhaps therefore be of interest.
Some Private Use Area code points for courtyard codes.
Some Private Use Area code points for numbers.
Some Private Use Area code points for chess pieces for use in chess diagrams.
A Private Use Area code point for a character for use in chromatic font research.
The author is always interested to learn of interest in these Private Use Area code point documents, including any implementations of the code points in founts, availability of such founts, use of such founts, use of the code points in preparing documents and so on, as well as learning of any problems which may arise.
Also, suggestions for further documents in the series are also welcome.
This file is accessible as follows.