Re: Ligatures

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: ASSI <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden
> Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 07:43:00 +0200
> 
> The only program I ever used that I remember doing this (a WYSIWYG TeX
> editor for DOS, natch) temporarily broke the ligature while you were
> moving the cursor inside.  It looked a bit strange and was slightly
> distracting if you were just moving the cursor without trying to edit
> it, but otherwise did the job well.

That's what I had in mind (although I never used such an editor).

> The origin of this ligature has no general consensus AFAIK, but if you
> read older (facsimile) printed literature from around 1800 it becomes
> pretty obvious that the typeface evolved from a combination of long s
> (mainly used inside a word) and round s (used at the end).  The origin
> of "sz" in that place is even more complicated to figure out, but it
> seems (to me anyway) that this was driven by a desire to preserve the
> distinction to double s / "ss" when using typefaces that didn't have the
> proper glyphs for the various types of "s" previously available in
> Fraktur.  Neither "fs" nor "fz" should ligature into "ß" (which is a
> proper glyph these days and no longer a ligature, although you are still
> allowed to break it into either "ss" or "sz" when using typefaces that
> don't support it, like most versalia).

I think we should support these unusual ligatures for those who'd like
to see them, probably as an opt-in feature.