On Saturday 30 November 2013 00:23:22 Zero Piraeus did opine: > On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 04:21:49AM +0000, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > > On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 21:08:49 -0500, Roy Smith wrote: > > > The whole idea of ligatures like fi is purely typographic. > > > > In English, that's correct. I'm not sure if we can generalise that to > > all languages that have ligatures. It also partly depends on how you > > define ligatures. For example, would you consider that ampersand & to > > be a ligature? These days, I would consider & to be a distinct > > character, but originally it began as a ligature for "et" (Latin for > > "and"). > > > > But let's skip such corner cases, as they provide much heat but no > > illumination, [...] > > In the interest of warmth (I know it's winter in some parts of the > world) ... > > As I understand it, "&" has always been used to replace the word "et" > specifically, rather than the letter-pair e,t (no-one has ever written > "k&tle" other than ironically), which makes it a logogram rather than a > ligature (like "@").
Whereas in these here parts, the "&" has always been read as a single character shortcut for the word "and". > > (I happen to think the presence of ligatures in Unicode is insane, but > my dictator-of-the-world certificate appears to have gotten lost in the > post, so fixing that will have to wait). > > -[]z. Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> "I remember when I was a kid I used to come home from Sunday School and my mother would get drunk and try to make pancakes." -- George Carlin A pen in the hand of this president is far more dangerous than 200 million guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
