Making a font with ligatures to display thirteenth-century monk numerals
7 hours ago
- #typography
- #Cistercian-numerals
- #font-ligatures
- Created a font with 9,999 ligatures to display Cistercian monk numerals.
- Inspired by Chris Heilmann’s Cistercian numeral generator, but uses font ligatures instead of images.
- Font ligatures visually enhance text while preserving machine-readable characters, useful for programming fonts like Fira Code.
- Ligatures allow for easy searching, copying, and typing without JavaScript.
- The font replaces sequences like '1000' with corresponding Cistercian numeral glyphs.
- Glyphs are defined using SVG paths from Heilmann’s generator.
- Quadrants in the numerals follow a 'backwards-Z' shape, differing from modern left-to-right or Cartesian ordering.
- Original horizontal stave usage had a more natural 'backwards-N' order.
- Cistercian numerals reverse the endianness of Arabic numerals, placing the least significant digit first.
- Font features can be used for creative or nefarious text manipulation, posing accessibility concerns.
- Suggests a 'Cloud to Butt' browser extension implemented with font ligatures as an exercise.