Re: TeX ligatures in XeTeX/LuaTeX: ``who needs them''?

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Maurí­cio wrote:
>  > Hello,
>  >
>  > just wondering: how many ConTeXt-ers depend on ligatures such as:
>  >    '' (double quote) and '' (two single quotes) -> right double quote
>  >   `` -> left double quote
>  >   ,, -> DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK
>  > (...)
> 
> You got replies from experienced users, so I
> thought you could use an answer from a
> begginer; there are many of us out there!
> 
> Really, all of those are problems to me, even
> -- and ---. If you have ligatures at all, you
> have to take some (a lot) of time to learn
> how they work, and which ones are available,
> and how to avoid them when you need.
> 
> I would really like if we could replace
> ligatures for a nice page, linked from the
> "first steps" documentation, explaining the
> most interesting Unicode characters and when
> to use them properly. I've just read about
> U+2010–2015 in wikipedia pages about hyphens
> and dashes, and I wish I were directed to
> those pages instead of everything I've read
> about ligatures so far.
> 
> I'm not a professional user of Context, so of
> course you'll take that into account as you
> consider what I say.

actually, what is called ligatures here, are no ligatures in the real 
sense; they are tricks that use the tex ligature mechanism to achieve 
something (the fi ligature came out of f + i written in sequence but 
nobody in the past ever wrore, by pen, three -'s separated by a small 
space in a row, it's was just a longer rule)

by adding a hyphen+hyphen=endash and endash+hyphen=emdash rule in the 
(first) characters ligature table in the tfm file, one could save typing

this solution is a very english-language oriented one, because in quite 
some languages --- happens less often than characters with accents or 
whateve; i wonder what would have happened if tex had initially been 
written for another language because if the tfm file could have dealt 
with > 256 characters "u -> uumlaut would have made sense as pseudo 
ligature too ...

sometimes it's even hard to get rid of such pseudo ligs ... in documents 
coded in xml, --- really is --- and it' snear to impossible in 
traditional tex to selectively get rid of it ...

so, apart from remapping the weird single quote and the en/emdashes (too 
many docs around) is no real reason for the other ones ...

Hans


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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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