Fonts & Character Sets ⇒ Avoiding double letter ligatures

[eiterorm]

After writing a little bit of text in LaTex, I've discovered that "ff" and "fl" show up in my output documents as ligatures. Personally, I think text in general looks better without such ligatures, and I found out one could avoid such ligatures by writing "f{}f" and "f{}l". This, however, does not always work, (e.g. it wouldn't work in the abstract when using the article document class) and it seems like an awful lot of unnecessary work when writing, say, a lab report on electrical effect.

Is there a simple way of redefining "ff" and "fl" to avoid such ligatures?
Are there any other similar ligatures I should be aware of?

I guess there's a reason why LaTeX uses such ligatures instead of just writing out the two letters. Are such ligatures supposed to make text in general aesthetically better?

Thanks!

[frabjous]

There's an old topic on this here, which provides an answer.
http://www.latex-community.org/forum/vi ... ?f=5&t=953

This is also pretty easy to enable/disable with XeLaTeX. Look at the fontspec documentation.

Can't say why you'd want to do this, however. Ligatures are much more professional looking, in my opinion. (Not just mine--look at any professionally typeset book on your shelf.)

Besides the ones you mentioned, there are also special "fi", "ffi", "ffl" ligatures in Computer/Latin Modern. Some other fonts have "Th" ligatures, and others. What font have you been using?

[eiterorm]

Thanks!

I assumed there was an old thread about this, but I couldn't find one.

I picked up an old math book, like you said, and the text was indeed written with ligatures. Apart from the "fi" ligature, I haven't noticed this before now, to be honest. I guess the reason why I noticed the ligatures in LaTeX is because the "ff" ligature stands more out in the font I'm using (T1 / European EC), than in the font my math books use.

I still think "ff" looks better without the ligature, but I guess I just have to get used to this. =P

[josephwright]

I still think "ff" looks better without the ligature, but I guess I just have to get used to this. =P

Then choose a different font which is more to your liking. The ligatures of a font are a decision made by the font designer.

[eiterorm]

Then choose a different font which is more to your liking. The ligatures of a font are a decision made by the font designer.

I think it's better to get used to the ligatures in my current font. Some of the professors are a bit particular on the fonts and layout.

Yet for a document that is not to be read by a professor, this is a good tip. ;-]
Thanks!