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xotypeco / big_shoulders

SIL Open Font License 1.1
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Star ligature not working in HTML/CSS? #41

Closed cassidoo closed 1 year ago

cassidoo commented 1 year ago

I've been trying to enable the correct ligatures to get them working in HTML and CSS based on the documentation on design.chicago.gov, with no success:

Example of my attempts

Besides setting font-variant-ligatures: discretionary-ligatures;, what else do I need to do to make this work? I noticed that it's not appearing properly on the typography website either. Did something change?

xotypeco commented 1 year ago

it's because you're calling the fonts from the Google Fonts API. the API doesn't serve a complete font file, including dlig instructions, for reasons I can't remember. (likewise, true small caps & alternate forms aren't served by the API.)

dlig will work if you've downloaded and hosted the full font files on your own domain.

as a workaround to the API not serving dlig: I also added the rectangle and star as unicode symbols (which I think the API will call).

the rectangle is filledRect (U+25ac) and the star is sixPointedBlackStar (U+2736)

the guide website isn't working, and doesn't note any of these details, because the city employee who made it called the fonts from the API. they didn't have a chance to document the added details because the Lightfoot administration eliminated their job during the early days of the pandemic, immediately after the Chicago Design System was made public.

so basically, Lightfoot put out a press release saying "look at this amazing thing I did," then almost immediately made it difficult for anyone to support it—which is a typical Lori Lightfoot thing to do.