[XeTeX] How to use ligatures for TTF fonts?

[Jonathan Kew]

On 30 Jan 2009, at 18:20, Mi CHEN wrote:

> Hi, all
>
> I found that TTF fonts such as Times New Roman which comes with  
> Windows indeed has glyphs for ligatures of "fi" and "fl". But the  
> two glyphs cannot be accessed automatically in XeTeX with fontspec  
> package, I mean "f" and "i" are displayed as independent glyphs  
> instead of  special glyph "fi". Actually I could access the two  
> glyphs by explicitly calling them by \namedglyph{fi} and  
> \namedglyph{fl}, but is there an automatically method to handle  
> this? I tried to load Times New Roman by \fontspec[Ligatures=Common] 
> {Times New Roman} but failed:(

What OS version are you using, and what version of Times New Roman is  
this? Any fairly recent version Windows version of TNR should include  
the OpenType tables that support these ligatures, but if you're using  
an old font then perhaps that wasn't supported.

JK