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I don't mind the look of ligatures too much in most monospace fonts that have them. However, I use my editor and terminal emulator for a lot more than just editing source code in common programming languages. In every single ligature-supporting font I've tried, there are edge cases where glyphs are combined in a way that don't make sense in context, which is jarring enough to not be worth it for me.

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Because they are intended to be a tool for typesetters to use in right scenarios - or in your case turn off in wrong ones.

In text editors you can only go all in or not. It is not really intended for that.

> In text editors you can only go all in or not.

I don't think that needs to be the case. Text editors already do syntax highlighting, and if using treesitter they have accurate understanding of the syntax. So there isn't major blockers for applying ligatures selectively based on syntax.

It might be possible in code because it's more constrained enviroment but well it hasn't been solved in general typesetting. The rules are very hard to hardcode because it is subjective and often requires broad context (like understanding line above or what you do with names). Thats why it has been always done by humans if you want good results. And its not like smart people havent tried (like Knuth for example).

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