3.4.2 Ligatures

In order to get ligature information for some pair of characters in a font, use the following function.

Function: ligature CHARACTER1 CHARACTER2

Return ligature for CHARACTER1 and CHARACTER2, or nil.
Both characters must belong to the same font.

Unless there’s no such ligature, the value returned by this function is an instance of a class called ligature. In the context of this library, the term “ligature” denotes an instance of this class.

A ligature contains four bits of information accessible as described below.

• composite: the character to insert between the two original ones.
• delete-before and delete-after: whether to delete the characters before and after the composite.
• pass-over: the number of characters to skip in order to reach the next one, once the ligature has been made.