Am 2000-09-12 um 16:14 h UCT hat Peter_Constable@sil.org geschrieben: > So, for example, the meaning of a text wouldn't change according to > whether a sequence of "fi" is or isn't ligated. This is not true for German. German typographic rules forbid a ligature across the constituent boundaries in compounds. So, if a text has ligatures, at all, the absence of an, otherwise possible, ligature indicates a constituent boundary. You can verify this, e. g., in a professionally typeset German-English dictionary, such as Cassell's (ISBN 0-304-52292-9): look up the words "aufliegen" (or any other word starting with "aufl"), without an f-l ligature, and "auffliegen" (or "fliegen"), with an f-l ligature. (I could not readyly find an example involving f and i, though.) Now, German allows almost arbitrary compound words, hence the presence or absence of a particular constituent boundary may well make a dif- ference, in some cases. One minimal pair (I think, it was introduced by Jörg K) is "Taufliege": - with an f-l ligature, it clearly means "drosophyla", alternate spelling "Tau-Fliege", - with separate f and l, in a text otherwise having ligatures, it means "baptizing bed" (whatever that may be), alternate spelling "Tauf-Liege", (The first one is a standard term, though not mentioned in my copy of Cassel's; the second one is an ad-hoc invention, though following a common scheme: Cassel's lists 15 similar compounds, from "Taufakt" through "Taufzeuge".) I am sure that other minimal pairs exist waiting to be discovered, some even involving f and i. For German needs, a "zero-width non-ligator" character would be suitable, as only the absence of a ligature carries any meaning; a "zero-width ligator" character would not be feasable for German, as the pre- sence of ligatures at large is a matter of the fonts and skills used in rendering, or typesetting, so you cannot insert ZWLs in every position where a ligation could occurr, if only the text were brought into a suitably sophisticated environment. As the hyphenating rules follow the same pattern as the non-ligating, we can get along with the syllable hyphen though (where it is correctly implemented, that is). Best wishes, Otto Stolz