[Scribus] Ligatures and "Expert Fonts" again

[Christoph Schäfer]

Hi Robert,

> LaTeX is fifteen years ahead... ;)

Yes, it is, and it was since its (or more precisely: TeX's) inception. 
The simple reason is that the ingenious Prof. Knuth left the Ivory tower 
of the University and learned the "black art" of typesetters. TeX is the 
digital incarnation of more than 500 years of experience in typesetting. 
Since you are a German, you would be surprised how many of our spelling 
rules (at least before some bureaucrats decided to commit an act of 
vandalism to them in 1996) are not guided by linguistic principles but 
by aesthetical ones, found by typesetters over the centuries. The old 
rule not to hyphenate "st", for instance, was established by 
typesetters, because they found out that it made reading easier (and 
spelling, as much as typography, is above all about ease of reading!).

Given that background, it seems almost natural to me that many or most 
of InDesign's typographic features are to a large extent based on 
TeX/LaTeX algorithms. This is, IMHO, the place to dig for the real 
treasures of digital typography.

Cheers,

Christoph