From my background I never perceived a need, but I guess I (and most
people??) wouldn't really mind the tradition coming back (in
Germany) if things are designed well (which is the job of the font
designer) and for the user everything is handled automatically in
the background by the available technology ...
Which cannot happen for German, as it is one of the languages where
the same letter pair may or may not have a ligature based on the
*meaning* of the word - something that you can't automate.
You are absolutely right!
<snip>
Certain layout processes, in certain cases, in certain languages,
simply can't be fully automated.
*Actually*, the emphasis here is on the word "fully". Writing a
(language-specific) tool (or wordprocessor plugin) for semi-automated
processing would be so easy - something that walks you through all cases
of ambiguous hyphenation and ligatures (if the font so requires). An
unobtrusive way of doing this would be if the word processor simply put
a purple squiggly line under each word needing closer inspection, for
right-click fixing. I'm really wondering why such tools are not employed
or - if they are - I haven't heard of them ...
Stephan
