Does FM9 support ligatures and true small caps?

[Hedley Finger]

[BEST IF VIEWED AS HTML MESSAGE]

A number of fonts support ligatures and true small caps, e.g. Linux 
Libertine, some Adobe expert fonts.  (A ligature is when two or more 
distinct letters or characters are collapsed into a single glyph:

Et 	& <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%26> 	U+0026
ſs, ss 	ß <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F> 	U+00DF
AE, ae 	Æ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86>, æ 	U+00C6, U+00E6
OE, oe 	Œ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%92>, œ 	U+0152, U+0153
IJ, ij 	IJ, ij 	U+0132, U+0133
ct
	
	?
ue 	ᵫ 	U+1D6B
ff 	ff 	U+FB00
fi 	fi 	U+FB01
fj
	
	?
fl 	fl 	U+FB02
ft
	
	?
ffi 	ffi 	U+FB03
ffl 	ffl 	U+FB04
fft
	
	?
ſt 	ſt 	U+FB05
st 	st 	U+FB06



InDesign cleverly stores words such as 'office', 'piffle', 'cast', 
'fact', etc. as sequences of single letters internally but renders them 
with the ligatures ffi, ffl, st, ct, etc. on the display.  When the 
cursor is placed on one of these ligature glyphs, the display separates 
into single letters to allow correction, forced hyphenation, etc. and 
also separates when a word has to be divided with a hyphen at the end of 
a fully justified line.

Adobe expert fonts and OTF (Open Type Format) fonts also support true 
small caps that have the correct stroke weight, unlike faux small caps 
that are derived by shrinking true capitals, thus accounting for the 
spindly appearance of the thinned-down strokes.

Can anyone tell me whether FrameMaker v. 9 supports ligatures and small 
caps?**  I am working on a publication using the  OpenType packaging of 
Linux Libertine (font name 'Linux Libertine O') but FM will not render 
ligatures and small caps correctly.  Now if Adobe's InDesign product 
(which I do not have) can manage this, why not FM, especially now that 
Unicode support has been added.

If you are viewing the HTML version of this message, you will note in 
the table above that even my crummy email client can do ligatures.

Regards,
Hedley

** There is a utility that converts a TrueType or OpenType font to a set 
consisting of regular plus expert PostScript fonts.  A FrameMaker 
plug-in then allows you to search for groups of letters normally 
rendered as ligatures and replace them with the ligature glyphs as the 
last step before generating a PDF for your printer.  But you have to 
remember to do this on a copy of the publication or have a good version 
management system that allows you to roll back to a previous version!

--

Hedley Finger

28 Regent Street   Camberwell VIC 3124   Australia
Tel. +61 3 9809 1229   Fax. (call phone first)
Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558
Email. "Hedley Finger" <hfinger at handholding.com.au>


--

Hedley Finger

28 Regent Street   Camberwell VIC 3124   Australia
Tel. +61 3 9809 1229   Fax. (call phone first)
Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558
Email. "Hedley Finger" <hfinger at handholding.com.au>