We talked about ligatures in-depth in BT-001 bulletin: https://berkeleygraphics.com/public-affairs/bulletins/BT-001...

In short, we think 1 keypress = 1 symbol printed on the screen. That explicitness brings peace. But, we also think that ligatures are optional and many people like them (read about all the pros and cons in the link above).

That makes everyone happy.

> and many people like them

I love them and can barely tolerate not having them. These ligatures of yours filled my heart with joy. Thank you!

You are not alone. While I can imagine a feasible use for some very commonly used glyph combinations being made a ligature, I just really prefer the one glyph per key press presentation (kerning them well OTOH is always greatly appreciated). Unicode in text editors still bugs me in that way, in the back of my mind I know that pretty non-ASCII character is taking up more than a byte, and it's... distracting.

Then don't use them. They are always optional, and in fact usually require opt-in via editor settings.

I just posted exactly the same thing with more words. Totally agree with you.