[texhax] Ligatures

[Joel Coltoff]

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Raj wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Can some one please let me know how to switch off the ligatures in LaTeX.
>
> I am using default CMR fonts and I want to switch off the ligatures so
> that i don't have to use "\/" ever time.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> best regards,
> raj

An alternative to tfm2afm and afm2tfm is this posting from 1993.
I've used this but don't have it installed right now. In either case
you probably want to give the new font a different name so you can
use lighatures when you want to.

-----------------------
: Can somebody please tell me how to get rid of the `fi' ligature? I like
: the tletters separate better.

Use virtual fonts.  If you want to remove the ligatures from cmr10,
convert cmr10.tfm to a property list with `tftopl'.  Edit the property
list to remove the ligatures, add the necessary FONTMAP information and
save as vcmr10.pl.  Finally convert this new virtual property list into
a virtual font, vcmr10.vf and vcmr10.tfm, with `vftovp'.

Here is the results of `diff cmr10.pl vcmr10.pl':

   16a17
   > (MAPFONT D 0 (FONTNAME cmr10))
   23,25d23
   <    (LIG C i O 14)
   <    (LIG C f O 13)
   <    (LIG C l O 15)
   33,34d30
   <    (LIG C i O 16)
   <    (LIG C l O 17)


Virtual fonts are described in TUGboat, Volume 11 (1990), No. 1.  They
certainly weren't designed with this abomination in mind, but this is
probably the quickest and cleanest method.
-----------------------

-- 
Joel Coltoff

".... "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"
    -- Sir Winston Churchill (This was before Windows-XP)