Some more Private Use Area code points for ligatures.

Unicode at present has some ligature characters and also a long s on its own and the German Eszett character.

The long s on its own is encoded in Unicode as U+017F and the Eszett as U+00DF.

Unicode currently has the ligatures ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl, long s t and st at U+FB00 through to U+FB06.

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.

This list, the code points being entirely the choice of the present author, is 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.

This list is a supplement to the first list, adding more ligature characters. This list does not alter the first list.

The first list contained code points for ligatures all of which are believed to have been used historically. This present list contains code points for ligatures which may or may not have been used historically. The reason for including them is so as to provide a list which will hopefully be consistent amongst end users where those end users choose to use a particular ligature.

For example, I have been requested to include an ffj ligature and it was pointed out to me that as there is an ff ligature it might be a good idea to consider adding an ff_ ligature wherever a f_ is made available. So, I have added ff_ ligatures where each f_ ligature exists.

I have also instituted a policy of including a long s long s _ ligature wherever a long s _ ligature is made available.

My line of thinking is that if someone who is a fount maker has a copy of the list, then if he or she decides to implement characters on the list, that it is better to have all of the characters included in the list rather than to miss some out.

Also, as the use of ligatures in printing is an artistic matter and art exists in the present, even if, say, a particular ligature did not exist historically, perhaps it could be used now.

U+E759 long s long s b
U+E75A long s long s h
U+E75B long s long s k
U+E75C long s long s t

U+E770 fb
U+E771 ffb
U+E772 ffh
U+E773 ffj
U+E774 fk
U+E775 ffk
U+E776 fft

William Overington

1 June 2002