Ligatures are special typographic elements where two or more characters are combined into a single glyph. They are frequently used by font designers to display certain letter combinations with better spacing or connecting lines.
What are ligatures?
A common example is the “f+i” combination. In many fonts, the top curve of the letter f merges seamlessly with the dot of the i, forming a single, unified glyph. This results in smoother, more aesthetically pleasing text.
When a font includes ligatures, these combined glyphs are automatically used whenever the corresponding character sequence appears.
How do ligatures work in macOS?
On a Mac, most applications use the built-in text components of macOS.
These components typically:
- Automatically detect ligatures
- Replace character sequences with the corresponding ligature glyphs
However, not all applications handle ligatures in the same way. Some may ignore them entirely, depending on how text rendering is implemented.
Viewing ligatures in PopChar
PopChar can detect whether a font contains ligatures. If ligatures are available, they are displayed in a separate section at the end of the character table.
This allows you to:
- Easily identify ligatures within a font
- Inspect how they look before inserting them
Inserting ligatures
Note that ligatures seem to look like and behave like single characters, although they consist of multiple characters.
When you click a ligature in PopChar:
- PopChar inserts the corresponding character sequence (e.g., “f” + “i”) into your document
- The target application then determines whether to display it as a ligature glyph
- If ligatures are not supported, the characters will simply appear as normal individual letters
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