ME>You misunderstand the ZWL. What you've described is an
inputting operation. If German is well-behaved enough to trust
morphological analysis for ligature behaviour, then the ***ZWL
can be inserted automatically by software***. This would work
as well for fi, ffi, ffl &c ligatures. Unpredictable, rare and
nonce ligatures can be handled by the user inserting the ZWL
manually (as we do the SOFT HYPHEN).
[emphasis added]
JJ>In this case, it's possible to specify via either OpenType
or Apple Advanced >Typography (AAT) tables in a TrueType font
that such ligatures are required >when using your font.
Applications which take advantage of these >technologies will
do the right thing. (For the record, you can also specify
>required ligatures in Metafonts for use with TeX.)
ME>No, it isn't. Because it is impossible to easily apply
ligation in the many different manifestations which are
evidenced. In my paper on ZWL I have described the use of
Gaelic ligatures in printed books; it is NOT possible to decide
on two or three global settings which will give the correct
behaviour when turned on or off. The REALITIES are that what we
need to represent, in Latin (Roman, Gaelic, and Fraktur),
Greek, Old Church Cyrillic, Armenian, Runic, Etruscan, and so
on are far more complex than the fun one can have with Hoefler
Text.
If software can automatically do something in one place, it
seems to me that it should also be able to do an equivalent
thing in another place. I.e. if software can automatically add
ZWL at appropriate places to create the desired ligature glyphs
on output, then software should also be able to automatically
select the desired sequences of character codes (sans ZWL) to
substitute by ligature glyphs. At least, that seems to make
sense to me unless there's more to this story than I'm not
aware of.
For unpredictable ligatures, it should be possible (i.e. 'it is
technologically feasible', not 'software ought to be able') to
apply style information to the relevant run of text enabling a
feature that causes ligation.
Peter
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