Typesetting an old Latin ligature with pdftex

Question

I am using pdftex (MiKTeX) to typeset snippets of old texts. I am stuck on how to get the ligature that looks like qz in old latin (1526) (but could be some form of que). For example the third word below (and twice more on the last line)

I am using \fontfamily{jkpvos} from kpfonts to get the long s and st ligatures, but have no clue about the other. (The text is from Cursus quatuor mathematicarum artium liberalium by Pedro Ciruelo, 1526.)

Answer 1

The Junicode medieval font has this character mapped as E8BF. It seems to have an automatic ligature that provides it, but it doesn't really work that I could tell.

\documentclass[10pt]{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xunicode}
\defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX}
\setmainfont[Numbers=OldStyle]{Junicode}
\usepackage{xspace}

\newcommand\qz{\char"E8BF\xspace}

\begin{document}
\noindent veritas \& ratio vtriſ\qz. Numeri imparis tres ſunt ſpecies immediate quæ sunt, primus,
ſecundus,\& ad alterum primus. Numerus impar primus eſt qui ſola vnitate parte
aliquota metiri poteſt, vt.3.5.7. idem\qz incompoſitus nominatur,\& ratio vtriuſ\qz de\char"2E17 
\end{document}

which produces:

Note: As Thérèse said, using OTF fonts requires fontspec, hence using XeTeX or LuaTeX (in my case, I built this example with lualatex). That said, for medieval needs, you'll find more resources with OTF fonts.

Answer 2

You're right, the ligature in question is short for "que" ("and"). I don't think there's a ready-made ligature in the kpfonts package (with the veryoldstyle option set) for this ligature, but one can get reasonably good first approximation via q\kern-1.8pt{\footnotesize 3}:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[veryoldstyle]{kpfonts}
\newcommand\que{q\kern-1.8pt{\footnotesize 3}}
\begin{document}
ratio vtrius\que. Numeri imparis=
\end{document}

Addendum: Thanks to @Raphink's answer and the other comments, I think I now understand the characteristics of the -que ligature a bit better. If time and resources allow, it's naturally best if you can use a font (such as Junicode) that provides all required ligatures "out of the box." However, if you want to stick with the kpfonts package, you may want to use the modified definition of the -que ligature

\newcommand\que{q\kern-2pt\raise 1.2pt\hbox{{\scriptsize 3}}}

to get this output: