[Scribus] Basic questions about using ligatures in Scribus

[Maciej Hanski]

On Sun, 08 May 2005 09:10:04 -0400
Louis Desjardins <louisdesjardins at videotron.ca> wrote:

> >On Sunday 08 of May 2005 13:51, Craig Bradney wrote:
> >>  If you want to use ligatures, you have to put them in manually at
> >this>  point in time.
> >
> >...and it's very annoying. It should be done automatically. Other
> >thing - it will be propably time consuming for large texts.
> 
> This is a perfect use for a "multiple search & replace" feature which 
> would allow users to set any number of strings to be looked for and 
> substituted, at once. One could save this search & replace file for 
> further use. So, in the ligature case, you could have a preset file 
> simply called "Ligatures" and call it at any time in production.
> 
> That way, and until OpenType extra glyphs are fully and automatically 
> supported in Scribus (and even when they are), this could make 
> possible the use of the Expert series fonts that have all those extra 
> glyphs not found in the regular typeface. Who wants to search & 
> replace *one at a time* all the digits from 0 to 9 to set the regular 
> "Cap height" numbers to their "lowercase" counterparts? etc. Examples 
> for this are tons.
> 
> AFAIK, "multiple search & replace" doesn't exist in any of the 
> well-known DTP app (nor in any WP app). Only Quark had an XTension 
> called AliasPro back in the years of version 2-3-4. This XTension is 
> not maintained anymore. It was perfect to "clean" text coming from 
> various sources and help formatting.
> 
> Personnaly, I would see this feature as a *very* nice addition to
> Scribus.
> 

I wonder, if this ligature issue couldn't be rather a job for a plug in
or an extension script, the kind of Petr's Short Words? What I don't
understand is, how do other applications (e.g. LaTeX -- Petr?) know
which glyphs and how to substitute? Is this information delivered with
the font, or does a user always have to define it from scratch? If it's
delivered with the font or a particular type of fonts (Type1, what
else?), user interaction woudn't be necessary, right? An user could
just execute the script the way he does with the hyphenation (before or
after hyphenation?). 

just some chaotic thoughts
Maciej