font: Ligatures like ff have strange behavior

[rishig]

Copying conversation from https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/issues/topic/ligatures

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If you type something with two f's and then left arrow back over it, you get somewhat strange behavior, since the ff is turned into a ligature.
I managed to get stranger behavior as well by using backspace instead of left arrow, though I don't have a repro at the moment. If we turn off ligatures, would that break accented characters? (fwiw, slack and gchat seem to handle the ff case fine)

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I have been able to reproduce the left arrow thing (or any other attempt of moving the cursor between both f's). The cursor stays after the last f, but if you type the text appears between them.
Something curious also happens if you click between both f's. The cursor should appear between the f's, but it doesn't. Actually, if you type new text, it appears after the ligature.

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This happens in the compose box, search boxes, edit box, etc.
@brockwhittaker in case you want to take a look.

(Marking as a bug, but feel free to remove if this feels more like an enhancement than a bug.)

[zulipbot]

Hello @zulip/server-misc members, this issue was labeled with the area: misc label, so you may want to check it out!

[timabbott]

I think this is probably a browser bug; I'm not sure there's anything we can do about it other than wait for the browsers to fix it. (Might be worth checking if they already have).

[rishig]

It does happen only in chrome (version 55) for me, and not firefox. I haven't checked with the latest chrome (version 58?). I guess one thing we could check would be: replace the font in gmail or slack with the font we use, and see if it happens there as well.

[timabbott]

Just verified it still happens in Chrome 58. I like that idea for how to test this.

[zulipbot]

Hello @zulip/server-browser-support members, this issue was labeled with the "area: browser-support" label, so you may want to check it out!

[Gautime]

Is this issue still valid? I can't reproduce this issue.

[timabbott]

I have not seen this in a long time; it was likely a browser bug fixed upstream. Closing as fixed upstream.

Thanks for the question @Gautime.

[Gautime]

@timabbott My pleasure sir !