Re: Kerning and ligatures in math roman font

[Ulrike Fischer <news3@nililand.de>]

Am Mon, 9 Nov 2015 13:13:12 +0100 schrieb Hans Hagen:

>> In this example there is no kerning and no ligatures in the math:
>>
>> \starttext
>>   WAiff $\mfunction{WAiff}$
>> \stoptext
>>
>> This is a different behaviour than with legacy math fonts.
> 
> depends what legacy is ...

I meant the fonts you would get with plaintex or pdflatex.

>> A question about this has been asked some month ago on tex.sx
>> (http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/252493/ligatures-are-not-used-in-opentype-maths-families).
>> The problem (or feature) exist also with xetex.
>>
>> With luatex one can avoid to loose the kerning by loading as math
>> roman font a font in mode base
>> (http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/277362/lualatex-no-kerning-within-operatorname-when-not-loading-lmodern-package/277395#277395,
>> I have no idea how to do this in context).
>>
>> Is this a luatex/xetex bug? Or a feature? How could one enable
>> kerning and/or ligatures without going back to base mode?
 
> most math fonts don't have ligatures etc ... in fact, as ligatures are a 
> language/script related feature and math is the script it makes not much 
> sense either

But the plaintex and latex examples on tex.SX don't use a math font
for operatornames like \sin or for \mathrm (which seems to be
\mfunction in context). It is a text font and it has ligatures and
kerning informations, but they are not used in math. 

Doesn't use context for \mfunction a text font too? I thought so
because it has kerning when used outside math:

\starttext
\mfunction{WAiff}

$\mfunction{WAiff}$
\stoptext

Also bad kerning in operator names is a nuisance. I don't think that
the default result of
\definemathcommand[VA][nolop]{\mfunction{VA}} is good looking. 



> in context you can do:
> 
> \setupmathematics
>    [functionstyle=normal]
> 
> which will use a box which then will trigger text fonts

Yes, one workaround is to quit math mode. The other to use fonts in
mode "base". But I would like to understand why workarounds are
needed at all. 


-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/

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