Re: kerning/ligatures in opentype fonts

[Alexander Kobel]

On 01/16/2014 02:25 PM, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> > hmm. I wasn't actually aware of that. But it makes sense. ;)
>
> Note that the German support for LaTeX goes even one step further: The
> command
>
>    "|
>
> (to be inserted between the two non-ligature characters) adds some
> small horizontal space to avoid glyph collisions.

I was about to ask in that direction.  If for a font "ff" leads to 
collisions, and the ligature is not correct at that point, is it 
recommended to insert space or to switch the font?  Or, stated 
differently:  Should I consider it a sign of low quality of a font if 
consecutive letters collide or touch unpleasantly, even if a ligature 
exists?

> As mentioned by Urs, there is even a (semi)automatic solution called
> `selnolig' which uses a dictionary of German words to find and handle
> such non-ligatures properly (this is, you don't have to insert "| any
> more).

Amazing.  IIUC, that requires the /text rendering engine/ to bring it's 
own dictionary?  (How) does it work if the word is hyphenated at a 
different position?  I thought the rendering engine is called with small 
units of text, such as the part before and after the hyphen separately; 
so the context is sent additionally?


Best,
Alexander