[Groff] using Linux Libertine with groff

[Dave Kemper]

Thanks are due to Werner Lemberg, for the pointer a couple of years
ago to the Linux Libertine font family, and to Peter Schaffter, whose
install-font.sh script made installing this family in groff a nearly
painless process.

I've played around some with these fonts, and there are a lot of things
I like.  But there are also a couple of odd shortcomings in their
interaction with groff, and I'm wondering if anyone has experienced
these or knows what causes them.

1. Although the fonts in this family define a number of ligatures,
groff doesn't use them.  This is because the font files generated by
install-font.sh contain no "ligatures" line.  I'm not sure whether this
is a shortcoming in one of the conversion utilities install-font.sh
calls, or whether there is something incorrectly defined in the original
.ttf files.  (At least one other TrueType font that I installed using
install-font.sh contains a "ligatures" line in its font file, so there
is support for this.)

2. In a number of cases, switching between Libertine Italic and Libertine
Roman requires an italic correction.  But the \/ and \, escapes, groff's
mechanism to handle this, have no effect on the output when using the
Libertine family.  Does anyone know what might cause this, or how to
correct it?

Thanks!