IJ

[mulliganaceous]

As of now, the font is still missing the IJ glyph in Latin Extended-A.

The best design for the capital IJ should look like a broken U.

[philippnurullin]

Hi @mulliganaceous
Thanks for the feedback. You are absolutely right, there is no such symbol in JetBrains Mono, and it is by design. This traditional ligature breaks the golden rule of monospaced typeface: never modify the number of symbols in the line. It merges two symbols into one and also merges the space taken by the symbols.

Every ligature we have in JetBrains Mono is taking the same amount of space regardless of legation.

Why do you need this particular glyph?

[mulliganaceous]

Some Dutch say this is a single letter; there is a monogram for IJ. Likewise, serbicroatian has Lj Nj Dž digraphs.

[smups]

tl;dr: ij/IJ is very much the same as æ/Æ and œ/Œ: technically they're just two letters smushed together, but they are often considered to be a single letter as they don't make the sound as their constituent letters (at all) and must always be capitalised together.

Longer story: the combination ij has a special place in dutch orthography and spelling. It would be nice to have the option to use the characters ij/IJ for those who prefer to indicate that it is a single letter; like how the Danes often prefer to write æ over ae.

In addition, in handwriting ij is always written as a single letter (like y/Y with dots on top). Some users might want to emulate that look by using the ij/IJ characters. For reference, this is what Dutch handwriting (as taught in school) looks like:

The main difference between Danish æ and Dutch ij is that the status of ij as a single letter is much more contentious than the status of æ as a single letter. The situation is comparable to French œ, in the sense that computers don't have a separate key for œ/ij, and it's not incorrect or something to write the two as separate letters.

Right so this is why one might argue that ij is a single letter:

• It's pronounced as a single sound (except in loan words)
• It's always capitalised together. For example, the Amsterdam neighbourhood of IJburg (never Ijburg)
• In handwriting, it is always written as a single letter. Basically "y" with dots on top, for both majuscule and minuscule versions.
• It was used interchangeably with the letter y for much of dutch literary history

For different reasons, it's often thought of as two letters too:

• Historically, the ij is a doubling of the letter i. As in bliven vs bliift just like modern kopen and koopt. In the past, people often didn't bother with the dots on letters, so ii looked too similar to u. That's why they added a lil swirl on the second i to create ij.
• A dude in the 1920's said so
• Computers don't have a separate ij key (anymore)
• IJ as two separate letters is much more common in typeset documents, although dutch texts often make use of fonts with ligatures for ij/IJ

Some more examples from wikipedia

[smups]

Oh and btw, I think OP was asking for characters for the IJ (U+0132) en ij (U+0133), s.t. Dutch users can have access to nice letters without annoying non-dutch users with an unexpected/unwanted ligature.

[philippnurullin]

Hi @smups
Thanks for the deep dive in the issue.

How do Dutch users usually access the IJ ij?

[smups]

@philippnurullin I don't think I can really speak for most users tbh, since I suspect that most don't use it (even though I personally really like ij), because it's a bit of a hassle to type and ij looks just fine for non-monospaced/Dutch specific fonts.

As for access to the glyph, on OS's with a compose key you it's quite easy to type: compose + i + j. You can make the capital version by typing compose + I + J. This is what I personally prefer. On Windows, you can use an alt code alt + 0307 for the small letter and alt + 0306 for the capital. MacOS has no support for ij at all beyond picking it from a special characters menu.

[smups]

Most Dutch (Netherlands) users use a standard US QWERTY keyboard with dead keys or a compose key btw, AZERTY (the French layout) is also common in Belgium cuz of the whole bilingual thing they got going on.

[philippnurullin]

Sounds like a pain. )

If there is no ligation expected from I+J and i+j then the symbols can be added.

Thanks again for the very helpful and interesting conversation. The numbers on the Dutch handwriting manual are my absolute favorite. And "A dude in the 1920's said so" historically speaking, is a very solid argument. I mean, it really is. ))

[smups]

If there is no ligation expected from I+J and i+j then the symbols can be added.

That'd be cool! I know it´s a bit of a niche issue (even amongst Dutch users), but it would make some of us (me) very happy if those symbols would be available :)

In case you're wondering about who exactly the dude from the 20's is that said so, I'm actually wrong about that lol, he (Kollewijn) supported the usage of y over ij. IJ was already official at that point because another two dudes had said so 40 years prior (De Vries en Te Winkel, 1880's). South Africa actually implemented Kollewijns spelling reforms, which is why contemporary Afrikaans has y instead of ij, and -lik instead of -lijk (amongst other differences).

[smups]

Hi again!

Thank you so much for adding ij and IJ, they look great!

I tried out the dev. version of the font. I think it works very well. I really like what you did with the capitol IJ, I think it looks great, although I think it might not work so well at a distance/with a small font size.

This first example I think really shows that the ij ligature significantly improves readability - the word "dijing" especially looks a lot better with the new ij.

The next example I have is a comparison between an ad of the Rijksmuseum with their own custom font and a recreation with the new ligatures:

[mulliganaceous]

Saw this, quite surprised that "ij" is still up to consideration. Personally, jetbrains mono is also a great ux font!