Some experimental art Private Use Area code points for ligatures.

In the document Some additional Private Use Area code points for ligatures. some ligatures which included both a long s and an f in the same ligature are encoded.

Since that time I have had further thoughts about ligatures as to what sequences of letters might reasonably be encoded as a ligature.

As the encoding space is available within my encoding system and certain code points would be unlikely to be used for encoding anything other than ligatures involving both a long s and an f, I am publishing in this document some encodings for what I am calling experimental art ligatures. I have simply used my knowledge of what words and proper names occur, or might reasonably occur, in English, and added in ligatures for those permutations of letters. The approach is more along considering mathematical permutations than considering likelihood of use. Yet, with the fairly wide availability of font producing software and interest in experimental art, maybe some of these experimental art ligatures will become encoded in electronic fonts. It is also just possible that someone interested in metal type might make one or two of them as experimental works of art, as a demonstration of his or her skill.

Readers who are interested in creative writing might as an exercise choose to write, for fun, a short story in an 18th Century style where the words used need as many as possible of the ligatures in the following list. Readers might perhaps assign points to their work, scoring each ligature only once. Perhaps three points for use of the ligature in an English word; two points for use in a new word, defined, so that it seems like it might reasonably become an English word; and one point for use in a name, so that perhaps Mr Chaffsfield of Affslade Manor might meet Miss Effsbridge. Certainly, I have made these names up for this document, yet they are such that they sound as if they could easily be ordinary English names.

Readers who are interested in historical printing might consider how an 18th Century English printer might have set a name such as Chaffsfield or Affslade or Effsbridge had it been included in some copy which had to be set. Would a long s have been used? Would a long s b ligature have been used? Are there any surviving pieces of 18th Century English printing which show examples of how such a sequence of letters was printed with the fount of metal type available?

The following ligatures involving both f and long s had been previously encoded.

U+E780 f long s

U+E790 long sf
U+E791 long sfi
U+E792 long sfj
U+E793 long sfl

This document now encodes the following experimental art ligatures.

U+E781 f long s b
U+E782 f long s f
U+E783 f long s h
U+E784 f long s i
U+E785 f long s k
U+E786 f long s l
U+E787 f long s t
U+E788 ff long s
U+E789 ff long s b
U+E78A ff long s f
U+E78B ff long s h
U+E78C ff long s i
U+E78D ff long s k
U+E78E ff long s l
U+E78F ff long s t

U+E794 long s long s f
U+E795 long s long s fi
U+E796 long s long s fj
U+E797 long s long s fl

U+E79C f long s fi
U+E79D f long s fl
U+E79E ff long s fi
U+E79F ff long s fl

William Overington

20 July 2002