Re: logos, symbols, and ligatures (RE: Encoding Personal Use Ideographs)

Adam Twardoch wrote,

> Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>
>> There is still a difference between typographic ligation, which is generally 
>> applied without considering the meaning and context (e.g., representing "fi" 
>> as a ligature no matter where it appears in the text) 
>
> In German, it is considered correct to only use ligatures within one 
> part of a compound word, but not across the parts. For example, in the 
> same text, you would use the "fl" ligature in the word "fliegen" (to 
> fly) and you would NOT use a ligature in the word "auflegen" (to put on, 
> to lay sth on sth), since it's "auf+legen".

Yes, Adam is right, of course.  It is the compound word boundaries
which stop ligature formation in German, and not the syllable 
boundaries which I'd mentioned in an earlier post.

Concerning "fi" ligature, imagine how a default automatic ligation
of such a string would affect Turkish text (where there is a
difference between dotted and un-dotted "i").  Or, how Latin
based scripts which use various diacritics over (and under)
the letter "i" would be affected if ligation was on by default.

It probably isn't safe to apply ligature formation conventions
of English or Finnish to other languages using the Latin script.

And, getting back to German, it's my understanding that the
ligature formation conventions are quite different even in the
same language when the text is set in Fraktur.  Indeed, ligature
formation in Fraktur appears to be more of an art than an
exact science.

Best regards,

James Kass