Thu 14 Feb 2008 08:16:59 PM UTC, comment #4:
I can confirm that the funny st ligature isn't showing up any more, in FreeMono or anywhere else, since the application of the Debian patches, which include the attached patch.
I'll close this report, since that's mostly what it was about.
However, I don't understand a couple of things about ligatures.
1) What applications use the ligatures? I tried OpenOffice and Kword. Nothing. Also no controls for ligatures that I could see.
Now, I remember that long ago MS Word didn't do ligatures, and this was given as the reason to use proper page layout programs instead, for professional printing.
2) In the TrueType fonts, I don't see how the ligatures are associated with a string, such as 'ffi'.
3) What is the intent of the distinction between discretionary vs mandatory ligatures?
Is it that some scripts are unreadable without ligatures?
Myself, I think the 'ffi' etc ligatures are important to good typesetting, because otherwise letters collide. On the other hand one almost never sees the conjoined 'st' ligature. Can that distinction be made in the font as well?
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