From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20110616121700.GA9131@polynum.com> References: <20110616121700.GA9131@polynum.com> Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:18:20 -0400 Message-ID: From: "Joel C. Salomon" To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] [RFC] fonts and unicode/utf [TeX] Topicbox-Message-UUID: f11bd8a4-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 8:17 AM, wrote: > Second question: I'm trying to find if, in western languages, including > ligatures for ae and oe would be good since it is generally needed (one > can forbid ligatures by inserting "{}" between the letters), or if it's > not correct to set this by default for fonts (having the glyphes) since > some western languages use generally the ae or oe combinations without > knowing or expecting the substitution. Unicode has part of the answer: Some ligatures (e.g., U+FB03 =E2=80=9C=EF= =AC=83=E2=80=9D) are =E2=80=9CPresentation Forms=E2=80=9D, i.e., not =E2=80=9Creal=E2=80=9D char= acters but alternate visual presentations of the the comprising characters. Those are (usually) OK to generate automatically. But =E2=80=9Cae=E2=80=9D=E2=89=A0=E2=80=9C= =C3=A6=E2=80=9D and =E2=80=9Coe=E2=80=9D=E2=89=A0=E2=80=9C=C5=93=E2=80=9D, = &c.=E2=80=94please don=E2=80=99t make these substitutions Unicode doesn=E2=80=99t have many of these Presentation Forms, and only includes them for round-trip compatibility with other code sets that have them. New ligatures of this sort are *very* unlikely to be added. Better solution, as Russ suggested, is OpenType. In that format, the font designer can include common (e.g., =E2=80=9Cff=E2=80=9D), historical (= e.g., =E2=80=9Cst=E2=80=9D & =E2=80=9C=C5=BFs=E2=80=9D), and even ad-hoc ligatures. (There are =E2=80= =9Cfun=E2=80=9D fonts with =E2=80=9CLOL=E2=80=9D ligatures, for example.) Different sets of ligatures can be enabled/disabled by selecting combinations of OTF features. At which point you=E2=80=99ve reinvented X=C9=98TeX. =E2=80=94Joel