I like to keep up with the current version but this time it was a mistake

[hobnail]

In Sigil for the code view font I've been using Microsoft's Cascadia Code. Ordinarily I'd use Microsoft's Consolas but I switched to Cascadia Code when I heard about it since it looks even nicer. Today I finally upgraded Sigil from 0.whatever it was to the latest version. Checking the preferences I saw Cascadia Code and decided to see if there's a newer version and there was so I replaced the one I had with the new one.

They've completely changed the curly quotes. They look like regular straight quotes. In the screen grab the "Regular quotes" paragraph is using the straight quotes. If you look very close their curly quotes are slightly thicker at the tops or bottoms but it's much too subtle for my eyes.

It also has ligatures for coding stuff; I recently read an article online somewhere where they said that is a bad idea. I guess I should try and figure out where they're used so I don't get tripped by that as well.

[hobnail]

Ugh, the ligatures are as bad as having the numeric html entities replaced (some like that, but I don't). So != is replaced by an equals sign with a diagonal slash through it, => is replaced by that math arrow symbol.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by hobnail

Ugh, the ligatures [...] So != is replaced by an equals sign with a diagonal slash through it, => is replaced by that math arrow symbol.

Looks like the ligatureless version is now called "Cascadia Mono":

https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code/releases

Looks like the change happened around November 2019.

Originally Posted by hobnail

It also has ligatures for coding stuff; I recently read an article online somewhere where they said that is a bad idea. I guess I should try and figure out where they're used so I don't get tripped by that as well.

Some people like it, some people don't.

Would be interested in seeing this article you speak of.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Would be interested in seeing this article you speak of.

I've seen so many articles both for and against ligatures and coding that finding one is just a Google search away. One sample would be found at I'm Not a Fan of Programming Font Ligatures.

Personally, I'm more in the no camp. The only time I used a font that produced ligatures, it made it harder not easier to read the code.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by hobnail

It also has ligatures for coding stuff; I recently read an article online somewhere where they said that is a bad idea. I guess I should try and figure out where they're used so I don't get tripped by that as well.

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Some people like it, some people don't.

Would be interested in seeing this article you speak of.

Originally Posted by DNSB

I've seen so many articles both for and against ligatures and coding that finding one is just a Google search away. One sample would be found at I'm Not a Fan of Programming Font Ligatures.

Personally, I'm more in the no camp. The only time I used a font that produced ligatures, it made it harder not easier to read the code.

Killing copy and paste makes it a non-starter for me. I'm surprised no one is complaining about that.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Looks like the ligatureless version is now called "Cascadia Mono":

https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code/releases

Looks like the change happened around November 2019.

Ah, thanks. I'll give it a try.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Killing copy and paste makes it a non-starter for me. I'm surprised no one is complaining about that.

I typed this into notepad using Cascadia Code got the ligatures and it pasted correctly into paint.net's text tool.

-> --> ==> != === !== && || <=<
### ***
www.whatever

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Killing copy and paste makes it a non-starter for me. I'm surprised no one is complaining about that.

The individual letters inside the ligatures themselves are there, it's only the way they're displayed. Copy/Paste and search shouldn't be messed up at all.

[hobnail]

It's the same as if you were to type fi, fl, etc. with a font/setup that does ligatures; copy and paste gets what you typed.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Killing copy and paste makes it a non-starter for me. I'm surprised no one is complaining about that.

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

The individual letters inside the ligatures themselves are there, it's only the way they're displayed. Copy/Paste and search shouldn't be messed up at all.

Originally Posted by hobnail

It's the same as if you were to type fi, fl, etc. with a font/setup that does ligatures; copy and paste gets what you typed.

My mistake then.

My only known recent experience with ligatures was a letter I wrote last year in libreoffice. When I printed it there was a blank space where a letter pair had been. I pulled the file up again and the correct letters were there. It took me a while to figure out they were shown as a ligature and that the printer font didn't have it. That put in my mind that a ligature is its own character.

It is still my opinion that ligatures are worse than useless.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

That put in my mind that a ligature is its own character.

It is its own character, but only on output when displayed or printed.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by hobnail

It is its own character, but only on output when displayed or printed.

Not necessarily.

In Unicode itself, there are a handful of ligature characters, but these were provided mostly for backwards compatibility. Characters like: ff, fi, fl, ffi.

And in the rare case, ligatures are actual letters in the alphabet. Like æ in Danish/Norwegian. For more details on this, see "Æ" on Wikipedia + "Orthographic ligature" > Letters and diacritics originating as ligatures.

OpenType

In OpenType, there are 4 main categories:

• Standard ligatures
• Contextual ligatures
• Discretionary ligatures
• Historical ligatures

Beyond that, ligatures can also be arbitrary combinations of letters. Like in these code-focused fonts with: +- -> ±.

The underlying characters are all still there: fi, st, fl... the font itself will just display these combinations differently or add flourishes depending on the settings (and font size!).

Side Note: For more specific details, see Microsoft's article, "OpenType Font Features" > Ligatures.

Originally Posted by j.p.s

It is still my opinion that ligatures are worse than useless.

They serve a purpose for readability. It's why often you see 'f' in ligatures, because the 'f' overhangs to the upper right, so it often causes unsightly visual gaps or clashes with other tall letters.

Side Note: For a lot more details/reading, see my Post #18 in "Turn off ligatures (temporarily)?" (and the rest of the thread) + especially see the talk I referenced in Post #29, "Selective Ligature Suppression" given at TUG 2018. In that talk, he goes to extreme detail about ligatures and how various languages handle them (plus many strange edge cases, like Turkish with the f + ı [dotless i]).

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Not necessarily.

In Unicode itself, there are a handful of ligature characters, but these were provided mostly for backwards compatibility. Characters like: ff, fi, fl, ffi.

(I think of them as glyphs rather than characters.) But aren't those glyphs what's used in the output? My thinking was that when there's a sequence that can be displayed with a ligature then something happens to make the ligature appear in the output instead of the original sequence.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by hobnail

(I think of them as glyphs rather than characters.)

Yeah. In normal language, glyph/symbol/character get used interchangeably... in Unicode, it gets a bit more technical, so "glyph" would be the proper term for a single displayed shape.

Originally Posted by hobnail

But aren't those glyphs what's used in the output? My thinking was that when there's a sequence that can be displayed with a ligature then something happens to make the ligature appear in the output instead of the original sequence.

On more technical Glyph/Ligature discussion, see the FAQ on the Unicode.org page, "Ligatures, Digraphs, Presentation Forms vs. Plain Text", especially:

Q: What about the “ct” ligature? Is there a character for that in Unicode?

A: No, the “ct” ligature is another example of a ligature of Latin letters commonly seen in older type styles. [...] One simply represents the character sequence <c, t> in Unicode and depends on font design and font attribute controls to determine whether the result is ligated in display (or in printing). [...]

Remember that the Unicode Standard is a character encoding standard, and is not intended to standardize ligatures or other presentation forms, or any other aspects of the details of font and glyph design. The ligatures which you can find in the Unicode Standard are compatibility encodings only—and are not meant to set a precedent requiring the encoding of all ligatures as characters.

And in OpenType itself, I Love Typography's, "An Introduction to OpenType Substitution Features" goes into some of the nitty gritty of how alternates/ligatures work.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

...

Thanks, some fun reading there.