[pdftex] TrueType or OpenType fonts and microtypography?

[Karl Berry]

    the fonts we're going to use. If they give me some arbitrary TrueType
    or OpenType fonts will I be able to convert them for use with pdfLaTeX
    in such a way that it will still be able to do:

     1. Ligatures
     2. Proper kerning
     3. All the fancy stuff the microtype package does (esp. Hanging
        punctuation) 
     4. Anything else I would care about if I knew enough to care.

Yes, it is possible.  To get the ligatures is not trivial, unfortunately.

There are various tutorials (of varying quality) on this topic floating
around the web.  Thanh wrote a short article about it recently, with
special care to dealing with the encodings, which is always a
troublesome spot.

It'll be published in the next TUGboat, but I can post it in advance, or
Thanh can, depends on what he decides to do.