Re: kerning/ligatures in opentype fonts

[Josiah Boothby]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2014 15:05:50 +0100
Alexander Kobel <address@hidden> wrote:

> I was about to ask in that direction.  If for a font "ff" leads to 
> collisions, and the ligature is not correct at that point, is it 
> recommended to insert space or to switch the font?  Or, stated 
> differently:  Should I consider it a sign of low quality of a font if 
> consecutive letters collide or touch unpleasantly, even if a ligature 
> exists?

The short answer is yes. Some typefaces are designed to minimize
unwanted ligatures. Zapf's Palatino family comes immediately to mind
(and my eye finds Palatino to harmonize quite nicely with Lilypond's
music fonts), with the solution of an f with a short arm—this was a
specific design choice that Hermann Zapf made, as he was aware of
some of the technological problems facing typography. Some other fonts
are designed with this in mind (e.g., Gentium), but I don't know of any
others that I've used with Lilypond. The alternative is, yes, to adjust
the horizontal spacing to reduce risk of collision or visual cacophony. 

—Josiah