On Aug 14, 7:46, Michael Everson wrote: > Then operations such as ligaturing [...] could be achieved globally > vis à vis the _script_ without language-tagging and so on. This will not work, in the general case. German ligaturing rules depend on a linguistic analysis, as German features unboundedly many compound words, and German typesetting rules forbid ligatures across constituent-boundaries in composites. Example: - "das Schaffell" (sheepskin) has two separate "f" letters, - "das Schaffen" (activity; creation) has an "ff" ligature. I guess, other languages with many compound words will have similar rules. Who knows any examples? Another German typesetting rule forbids ligatures across stem-suffix boundaries, with the exeption of suffixes starting with an "i". So, - höflich (corteous) has separate "f" and "l" letters, - whilst "höfisch" (courtly) has an "fi" ligature. And, low!, my copy of the Cassel's German-English dictionary (ISBN 0 05 5229206) does all these examples right :-) So, German text requires - either language tagging + lingustic analysis, - or ZWNJ characters in all places where ligatures are forbidden (but who will be willing to type them in, consistently?), for correct ligaturing. Best wishes, Otto Stolz