CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

Annotations

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525

Vertical hiragana ligatures—examplesTable 7-48.

Two-character—o

a

Two-character—on Three-character—o

b

Three-character—on

These three two-characters hiragana strings are a.  (aru),  (koto), and  (shite).

These three three-characters hiragana strings are b.  (shikashi),  (toshite), and  (nadono).

Ligatures are generally made accessible through the use of the ‘liga’ (Standard Ligatures)

or ‘dlig’ (Discretionary Ligatures) GSUB feature of OpenType fonts. For most applications,

the ‘liga’ GSUB feature is turned on by default, and ligatures that are expected to be used

by default, such as  and  for Latin fonts, or the hiragana ligatures found in the special-

purpose  Std L font, should be included in this GSUB feature. Other ligatures are

more appropriate for including as part of the ‘dlig’ GSUB feature denition.

Annotations

While many of the typographic features and functionalities described thus far may have

seemed Japanese-specic due to the frequent use of Japanese examples, most apply equal-

ly well to Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese text. And, most of the features make perfect

typographic sense, such as rules that forbid certain classes of characters from beginning

or terminating lines. But, there are some other aspects of typography that are very much

Japanese-specic. is includes compliance with the JIS X 4051:2004 standard, the use of