[XeTeX] Accessing ligatures from FontForge

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2011, Meho R. wrote:
> 4. The old problem about PDF search unfortunately still remains: only
> basic standard ligatures are recognized. I would be happy if someone
> knows a way to correct this during font creation or correcting existing
> ones.

I think the Adobe Glyph Naming Conventions are supposed to address that:
   http://www.adobe.com/devnet/opentype/archives/glyph.html

That page provides an algorithm that is supposed to be used to convert
glyph names into sequences of Unicode character points.  If your glyphs
are named according to it, and if the PDF software follows it too, then
PDF software is supposed to be able to figure out what characters a glyph
represents for search purposes, even if it's not a standard ligature.  Of
course, there's no guarantee that a given package really will support the
rules properly.
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/