[pdftex] microtype / tracking / ligatures - question

[Robert]

On 02.05.2008 21:22, Jan Anderssen wrote:
> i have added a small amount of inter-letter space for small font sizes  
> through microtype:
> 
> %microtype
> \usepackage[tracking=true]{microtype}
> \DeclareMicrotypeSet*[tracking]{mytracking}
> 	{ encoding 	= *,
> 	  size 		= -small,
> 	  font 		= */*/*/sc/* }
> \SetTracking{ encoding = *, shape = sc }{ 10 }
> \SetTracking{ encoding = *, size = footnotesize }{ 15 }
> \SetTracking{ encoding = *, size = -footnotesize }{ 25 }
> 
> this seems to prevent ligatures from being used in small sizes. that  
> makes sense to me for ligatures of ff, fl, ffl, etc., but i was  
> wondering if there was a way to keep the "hyphen ones", -- and ---.

You seem to be using pdftex 1.40.3 (or older), since with 1.40.4 (or 
newer), *no* ligatures would be disabled. With the latter version, you 
could selectively disable ligatures with the `no ligatures' key (e.g., 
all ligatures starting with `f'):

\SetTracking[ no ligatures = {f} ]
             { encoding = *, shape = sc }{ 10 }

With the older pdftex version, there's nothing you can do about this.

Regards,
-- 
  Robert