[XeTeX] Accessing ligatures from FontForge

[Meho R.]

On 23.02.2011 14:17, mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:
> 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.
>   
Thanks for the link. However, even Adobe's OTF fonts have same problems
when used with XeLaTeX regarding ligatures and searchability, so I don't
think it is a naming convention issue. Curiously, when OTF fonts are
used with Scribus and ligatures are inserted manually, they are
recognized in PDF and no searchability issue there. Also, when OTF fonts
are converted to TTF, it seems searchability issue is gone with XeLaTeX
too (at least seems like that for couple of fonts I just tested).