Enable ligatures by default

[LeaVerou]

I can't really think of any case where somebody wouldn't want them, except in code.

Info on how to do it: http://blog.fontdeck.com/post/15777165734/opentype-1

[chuanxshi]

@LeaVerou looks like a promising feature but wondering

1. if we know which element the developer wants to target
2. if it's something considered default when it still relies quite heavily on prefixes to work

[LeaVerou]

1. I think (haven't checked) that they are inherited, so setting them on the body should be sufficient. Maybe cancelling them on code would also be needed.
2. It's a nice enhancement, nothing crucial. I think it's very much on par with progressive enhancement principles.

Btw, I edited the first post and added a request for hyphenation too, as it also falls in the same bucket of a nice enhancement that rarely isn't needed.

[necolas]

We previous discussed the idea of adding hyphenation in #708

[LeaVerou]

Cool, changed it back to only suggest ligatures then :)

[nimbupani]

As with prefixed hyphens, I am wary of adding prefixed features. It would be great if we can have a more readable version font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures supported. So while this is exciting I am -1 on this for now.

[paulirish]

I'm good with letting this feature bake a little more as well.

Might be a matter of months, but in case of edge cases (see: optimizeLegibility and antialiasing issues), i'd rather wait

[necolas]

I've heard from a dev at this place I'm working that Firefox 10 has a bug where it displays nothing in place of a ligature, if the font you're using doesn't have the corresponding ligatures. Haven't had a chance to check it out or get more details.

[drublic]

I've added a note about ligatures in the CSS section of the Extend and customise-wiki-page.

For the moment it seems like we should not add this by default if it may cause problems with custom-fonts and is not supported in browsers yet. If you all agree, let's close this for now.

I've reduced this test-case (from this article) to use prefixes (via prefix-free) in this dabblet.
Works for me in Chrome Stable, Firefox Stable.
Doesn't work in Safari 5.1.5, Opera Next.
Couldn't test in IE10 as dabblet seems to have some problems with it (@LeaVerou: "Permission denied for utopia.js").

[nimbupani]

Agreed. Thanks for this @drublic

[LeaVerou]

Couldn't test in IE10 as dabblet seems to have some problems with it (@LeaVerou: "Permission denied for utopia.js").

You can view the result page in every browser. Just add /result/ before /gist/

[necolas]

@drublic Please add these potential problems (and the test case + link back to this issue) to the wiki and then close this issue. Thanks!

[drublic]

@LeaVerou Thanks for pointing out. Re-checked this. Not working in IE 10 but I'm not sure if I've got the latest build (10.0.8102.0).

@necolas Updated the wiki-page. Issue is closed.

Thanks all!