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Subject:Ligatures, fi fl, Summary From:Bernd Hutschenreuther <Bernd -dot- Hutschenreuther -at- PREPRESS -dot- DE> Date:Wed, 25 Aug 1999 17:16:08 +0200
Hi, first of all, I want to thank for all the replies.
Now I want to summarize the answers:
Using fi and fl ligatures may improve significantly the appearence of
printed documentation for some fonts. For other fonts they are not
necessary.
How to use them:
1. Windows (95, NT, 98)
Windows supports fi and fl ligatures, (they must be available in the
fonts),they are in Unicode character set, so the application must support
the font handling in Unicode.
2. Word
In Word 97: (similar in Word 2000)
Select Insert>symbol
In the font pull down select 'normal text'
In the subset pull down select 'Alphabetic Presentation Forms'
You should see the type set scroll down to the end of the set and the
'fi' and 'fl' ligatures are shown at the end.
3. FrameMaker
FrameMaker in Windows uses the ANSI character set with a few exceptions. On
Mac and UNIX, FrameMaker uses Adobe Postscript instead of ANSI. The fi and
fl ligatures are not available for Windows. If you would open the
FrameMaker document on the Mac, the fi and fl ligatures will appear. On
Windows, an underline appears in place of any character not available (see
also the online manual.)
You cannot even drag and drop the ligatures from other applications into
the Framemaker document.
- For FrameMaker it is necessary to use a font where ligatures are not
needed. (Otherwise, you may re-map the glyph to an ANSI code, using a font
designer program -- unfortunately the files will loose compatibility with
other systems.)
