John Hudson <tiro at tiro dot com> wrote: > Documents using ZWJ can only be reliably rendered in particular > fonts. For example, there is no reason why I should not include the > sequence 'p ZWJ q' in a document, but unless I have a font containing > a pq ligature I will not be able to render the sequence as intended > by the author.
But the whole point of including ZWJ is to make the sequence "as connected as possible," which implies "and no more so." If you code the sequence "f ZWJ l" that should tell the renderer to use an fl ligature *if* one exists in the font, and to just use f l if it doesn't. Some fonts will be able to display the ligature, others won't. For "p ZWJ q" every font will just display p q. That's completely consistent with both the wording and the intent of ligation-by-ZWJ. There's nothing about using ZWJ to form ligatures that requires every font to contain all possible ligatures, nor anything that requires the renderer to switch fonts in mid-word and hunt around for a font that contains the requested ligature. If it's not there, it's not there. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California
