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

["Mojca Miklavec" <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com>]

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

or even more weird ones:
  !` -> inverted exclam
  ?` -> inverted question
  << -> LEFT POINTING GUILLEMET (never heard of that ligature)
  >> -> RIGHT POINTING GUILLEMET

Some ligatures are handy indeed:
  -- -> endash
  --- -> emdash
  ' -> right single quote (I'm, isn't etc.)

I'm posting that question to get some feedback about which ones are
expected to work/are fundamental for XeTeX & LuaTeX, so that others
might be dropped from default additional font features (for
third-party fonts). (I'm thinking about replacing tex-text in XeTeX
with something:
- more minimalistic
- compatible with mkiv.
Of course, users are still free to provide "tex-text" mapping
explicitely as it's probably going to hang aound forever, together
with XeTeX itself.)

Mojca
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