Re: [Groff] Query about .special

[Robert D. Goulding]

On Sun, 26 Jan 2003, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> > My second question.  Assuming that I can map the characters \[Fi]
> > etc. correctly; how do I get groff to use them automatically for
> > ligatures in text?  I assume I need a ligatures entry in the font
> > file; but do the more complex ligatures get added to the line
> > already in DAR, or do I put a line for them in DAX?
>
> What you want is not possible (yet).  I wonder whether I shall
> implement something like that.  OTOH, the whole ligature mechanism has
> to be redone to enable more ligatures than ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl:
> Instead of handling ligatures specially I will probably introduce
> fontsets, making this problem vanish completely.
>
>
Thanks for making this clear - I had half-expected that groff wouldn't be
able to find ligatures in special fonts and automatically replace, say,
`ffi' with \[Fi] (which is an unfortunate limitation - basically makes
expert fonts unusable; I look forward to the `fontset' enhancement).
WHat surprises me, though, is that it cannot find the glyph \[Fi] when it
is *specifically requested* using a \[] construct.  I.e., the special font
has a glyph Fi defined, but \[Fi] uses the fall-back instead of the
proper, available glyph.  This strikes me as a bug rather than a
limitation.

Robert.