Re: FT2 design question

[Just van Rossum]

At 12:28 PM +0000 26-02-2000, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
>To get a correct rendering of `shelfful' if the `liga' feature is
>activated, the user must insert e.g. U+200C, Unicode's zero width
>non-joining character between the two `f's (if you use Unicode as the
>input encoding), and the client application has to break the input
>string into `shelf' and `ful' if it finds U+200C in the input stream,
>feeding TT_GSUB_Apply_String() with these two substrings.

I think (but I'm not 100% sure) that this notion of "correct" ligature
replacement only exists in german. I quite positive that in english it's
quite alright to set 's' 'h' 'e' 'l' 'ff' 'u' 'l'. And in my humble
typographic opinion it should be ok to do unconditional ligature
replacement in any (latin) language: I don't see the point in changing
appearance rules based on spelling. It's a strange old tradition that we
might as well do away with, just like almost nobody in germany seems to
replace 'ck' with 'kk' anymore when a hyphenation occurs between the c and
the k.

Sorry for a little off-topic rant...

Just