Actually, I *was* talking about purely typographic/aesthetic ligatures as well. I'm aware that which di-/trigraphs need to be considered from a font design perspective is language-dependent. But the point is that I observe that: (a) aesthetic ligatures are not frequently seen in modern German print andI would assume that is because many commonly used fonts are designed in such a way that letter glyphs don't overlap anyway.
That's the impression I get - all {fl/fi}'s in the dozen or so German books I've just checked look perfectly fine to me :-)
And then you should not use any ligature. (Sorry if my original "should" implied otherwise.)
Oh, well, then it looks like we agree. I guess it's at least an interesting observation that they've found a workaround in some locales. Just as it will please typographers that ligatures are seemingly making a comeback everywhere, now that we've left the typewriter age. (And that ill-designed ligatures - possibly standing out more than their absence - have biased and corrupted my perception of the subject matter.)
- S
