Maurício wrote: > > Hello, > > > > just wondering: how many ConTeXt-ers depend on ligatures such as: > > '' (double quote) and '' (two single quotes) -> right double quote > > `` -> left double quote > > ,, -> DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK > > (...) > > You got replies from experienced users, so I > thought you could use an answer from a > begginer; there are many of us out there! > > Really, all of those are problems to me, even > -- and ---. If you have ligatures at all, you > have to take some (a lot) of time to learn > how they work, and which ones are available, > and how to avoid them when you need. > > I would really like if we could replace > ligatures for a nice page, linked from the > "first steps" documentation, explaining the > most interesting Unicode characters and when > to use them properly. I've just read about > U+2010–2015 in wikipedia pages about hyphens > and dashes, and I wish I were directed to > those pages instead of everything I've read > about ligatures so far. > > I'm not a professional user of Context, so of > course you'll take that into account as you > consider what I say.
actually, what is called ligatures here, are no ligatures in the real sense; they are tricks that use the tex ligature mechanism to achieve something (the fi ligature came out of f + i written in sequence but nobody in the past ever wrore, by pen, three -'s separated by a small space in a row, it's was just a longer rule) by adding a hyphen+hyphen=endash and endash+hyphen=emdash rule in the (first) characters ligature table in the tfm file, one could save typing this solution is a very english-language oriented one, because in quite some languages --- happens less often than characters with accents or whateve; i wonder what would have happened if tex had initially been written for another language because if the tfm file could have dealt with > 256 characters "u -> uumlaut would have made sense as pseudo ligature too ... sometimes it's even hard to get rid of such pseudo ligs ... in documents coded in xml, --- really is --- and it' snear to impossible in traditional tex to selectively get rid of it ... so, apart from remapping the weird single quote and the en/emdashes (too many docs around) is no real reason for the other ones ... Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl ----------------------------------------------------------------- ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________