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[Launchpad Bug Tracker <750670@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Daniel Schury (surst) has assigned this bug to you for Ubuntu Translations:

Unlike in English typography, in German typography ligatures are not
always allowed. Ligatures across internal word boundaries are disallowed
(see the section "Richtlinien für den Schriftsatz" in the Duden
Rechtschreibung). An example for such a word is "Auflösung"
('resolution', as in the display settings). There should be no fl-
ligature in words like "Auflösung". In the current German locale, there
is.

This problem is less salient in Maverick than in Lucid, but only because
the ligatures of the new default system font (Dalton Maag's Ubuntu) are
not visibly different from the unligated letters. The basic problem
persists, though. It can be reproduced by choosing a system font that
displays ligatures (for instance "Sans" as in Lucid).

Of course, this problem is hardly noticeable at all. On one hand, the
difference between a ligature and an unligated character sequence is
hardly noticeable in today's typical system font (it is more noticeable
in other fonts, e.g. Donald Knuth's Computer Modern). On the other hand,
most people happily ignore the fact that ligatures are disallowed in
some instances.

In the very most ideal of worlds, this problem would be fixed by a
system-wide automatic tool similar to a spell checker that would be
called for by the German locale.

In a more realistic, but still pretty ideal world, this problem would be
fixed by manually inserting the character U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER
(ZWNJ) in order to prohibit the ligature in the cases where it is
disallowed. Only very few cases are affected, basically certain
instances of "fl" and "ff". Certain instances of "fi" are potentially
affected, but only in highly unlikely words such as "Schilfinsel" ('reed
island'). If you want to achieve compatibility with fraktur fonts (which
are equally unlikely), then certain instances of "tz" need to be fixed
too, for instance, "Zeitzone" ('time zone').

In a less ideal world, fixing this problem would be impossible because
of a poor implementation of the ZWNJ.

** Affects: ubuntu-translations
     Importance: Undecided
     Assignee: Launchpad German Translators (lp-l10n-de)
         Status: New


** Tags: ligature
-- 
incorrect ligatures in German locale
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/750670
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