CJK Type Blog

For Adobe-Japan1–based OpenType/CFF Japanese fonts that support the glyph or glyphs for U+32FF ㋿ SQUARE ERA NAME REIWA (Unicode Version 12.1), meaning Adobe-Japan1-7 CID+23058 or CIDs 23058 and 23059, font developers need to be aware that adjustments to a small number of GSUB (Glyph SUBstitution) features are necessary to make them more easily accessible or simply usable.

Regardless of whether a font supports one or both glyphs, the 'dlig' (Discretionary Ligatures) GSUB feature benefits from the following additional substitution, which substitutes the glyphs for U+4EE4 令 and U+548C 和, CIDs 4009 and 4072, with the glyph for U+32FF ㋿, CID+23058:

substitute \4009 \4072 by \23058;

Click here to get the complete Adobe-Japan1-7 feature definition in AFDKO makeotf “features” file syntax.

The primary GSUB features for vertical layout, meaning the 'vert' (Vertical Alternates) and the now-deprecated—in favor of UAX #50 (Unicode Vertical Text Layout) compliance—'vrt2' (Vertical Alternates and Rotation) features, require the following additional substitution if the font supports the vertical form of U+32FF ㋿, CID+23059, which corresponds to fonts that support Adobe-Japan1-4 and higher:

substitute \23058 by \23059;

Click here to get the complete Adobe-Japan1-7 feature definitions in AFDKO makeotf “features” file syntax.

Lastly, and only for fonts that support the vertical form of U+32FF ㋿, the following additional 'aalt' (Access All Alternates) GSUB feature are helpful:

substitute \23058 by \23059;
substitute \23059 by \23058;

This particular GSUB feature is rather large, and varies depending on the actual glyphs in the font, so only the actual additional substitutions are provided above.

Happy font building!

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