Quote:
Originally Posted by frabjous
Actually, for me this does work with Firefox (3.5.8 for linux). I switched from Hoefler Text (which I don't have) to Sorts Mill Goudy, but otherwise used your xhtml code. (This is a freely available font, as are all the ones on that site.)
I couldn't get it to work in Chromium or Opera, though. Safari doesn't exist for linux.
Is your version of Hoefler Text OpenType or AAT? I wonder if that makes a difference.
In any case, the fact that this already happens for any major browser (especially an Open Source one) leaves reading device manufacturers with no excuses for not implementing it on their end!
On my system, most of these have the fi and fl ligatures, but not the ff, ffl or ffi (or rarer) ligatures -- and this includes Times New Roman.
The font in the screenshot is URW Gothic L, which is similar to Century Gothic, though from what I've seen, not identical. I don't use Safari, so I don't know how easy it is to use custom stylesheets, but Stylish makes it very easy to do it for Firefox, and you can do it pretty easily in Chrome too. I kind of went nuts making stylesheets for all the sites I visit often when I first discovered Stylish, and I used a different font for each. Actually, Gothic is starting to annoy me, so I'll probably change it soon. |
The biggest problem with ligatures - in general - is that their use presumes: a) the reader's eyes are not SHOT! (Mine are and I have eyeglass prescriptions to prove it.) b) the lighting is suitable for their use. (Again, NOT a smart presumption for these tired eyes.) c) the device can handle large enough font size to compensate for the two former. (Well, yes, I *can* always confine my e-reader use to my desktop computer or my Cybook Gen3, but doing so requires me to stuff a 36pt or larger font onto the screen in some lighting situations - and I get SO tired of reading two words, pressing 'next page', reading two more words, pressing 'next page', reading another two words, pressing 'next page'...)
So, for me, ligatures are a non-starter. Period. They may work well for you, but not for me. And outside of textbooks and technical manuals where the lack of competing literature force me to put up with them, I tend to avoid printed works that rely on them. Thus, I really don't care whether the applications on my ereaders do an adequate job of displaying them as I tend to filter them out when format-shifting.
Derek