On 2015-08-07 Hans Hagen wrote:
> 
> http://www.tomsguide.com/us/amazon-kindle-paperwhite,review-2967.html
> 
> I read under "Advanced Typesetting"
> 
> ... improved character placement and spacing, with advanced kerning and
> ligatures ...books with this enhanced typesetting are not easy to find
> 
> which makes me wonder: how can an html file (just a char stream)
> determine in an epub that kerning/ligaturing is disabled By default?
> 
> (I can imagine a css enabling something but still ...)
> 

There was lot of work in W3 recently dedicated in CSS for paged media. Even
further development of mature XSL-FO has been discontinued in favor of
HTML+CSS. 

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/designing-for-print-with-css/

And many publishers believe this is the future. While many features are not
available in browsers yet, there are corresponding JavaScript
modules/polyfills which mimic the intended rendering so nothing stops the
publishing industry from migrating their workflows into the new standards.

One of such JavaScript framework is vivliostyle.js - http://vivliostyle.com/

Back to the original question, enabling/disabling font features can be done
using CSS font-feature:
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-fonts/#font-rend-props

Jan