XeLaTeX fontspec Century Gothic not using ligatures

Question

I'm trying to use my Century Gothic TrueType font in a document, but it's failing to use the fl and fi ligatures. The input's below:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Century Gothic}
\begin{document}
ff fi fl
\end{document}

I'm using Win7; running charmap, I can see Century Gothic has the ligatures at 0xFB01 and 0xFB02, so I'd expect XeLaTeX to be able to pick them up. The document compiles with no errors, but no ligatures either.

I'm running MiKTeX, and the package update program tells me I'm on the latest version of everything.

Update: Raphink's suggestion to specify Ligatures=Rare or Ligatures=Historical has no effect on the produced document, and results in the console output having a few repeats of errors similar to the below:

*************************************************
* fontspec warning: "icu-feature-not-exist-in-font"
* 
* OpenType feature 'Ligatures=Rare' (+dlig) not available for font 'Century
* Gothic' with script '' and language ''.
*************************************************

Update 2: As suggested by Ulrike Fischer, possibly relevant output from running xelatex --output-driver="xdvipdfmv -vv" with \XeTeXtracingfonts= 1 in the file produced console output including the following lines that look vaguely relevant (it means nothing to me, but I'm hoping it might make sense to some of you):

<AGL:texglyphlist.txt>[1<CenturyGothic(Century Gothic:Regular)@9.96pt<NATIVE-FONTMAP:CenturyGothic/H/65536/0/0>
fontmap: CenturyGothic/H/65536/0/0 -> C:/Windows/Fonts/GOTHIC.TTF(Identity-H)

pdf_font>> Input encoding "Identity-H" requires at least 2 bytes.
pdf_font>> The -m <00> option will be assumed for "C:/Windows/Fonts/GOTHIC.TTF".
(CID:CenturyGothic)
pdf_font>> Type0 font "C:/Windows/Fonts/GOTHIC.TTF" cmap_id=<Identity-H,0> opened at font_id=<CenturyGothic/H/65536/0/0,0>.
>]
otf_cmap>> Creating ToUnicode CMap for "C:/Windows/Fonts/GOTHIC.TTF"...
(CID:C:/Windows/Fonts/GOTHIC.TTF[BNGDWL+CenturyGothic][CIDFontType2][5 glyphs (Max CID: 79)][12097 bytes])

There's also the following from the log file:

.................................................
. fontspec info: "no-scripts"
. 
. Font Century Gothic does not contain any OpenType `Script' information.
.................................................
…
.................................................
. fontspec info: "defining-font"
. 
. Font family 'CenturyGothic(0)' created for font 'Century Gothic' with
. options [Ligatures=TeX].
. 
. This font family consists of the following shapes:
. 
. * 'normal' with NFSS spec.:
. <->"Century Gothic/ICU:mapping=tex-text;"
. 
. * 'bold' with NFSS spec.:
. <->"Century Gothic/B/ICU:mapping=tex-text;"
. 
. * 'italic' with NFSS spec.:
. <->"Century Gothic/I/ICU:mapping=tex-text;"
. 
. * 'bold italic' with NFSS spec.:
. <->"Century Gothic/BI/ICU:mapping=tex-text;"
.................................................

Update 3: Note this is a TrueType font, not an OpenType one. Still, the ligatures exist, so I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to use them…

Answer 1

I have century gothic on the PC at work. I can't install the font properties extension (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/TrueTypeProperty21.mspx) there so I can't really inspect the font. But if I call the font with \setmainfont[Ligatures=Common]{Century Gothic} fontspec tells in the log:

OpenType feature 'Ligatures=Common' (+liga) not available for font 'Century
* Gothic/I' with script '' and language ''

So I would say the open type ligature feature is not there.

If you really want to use that font you will have to write a custom mapping file and compile it with teckit and then use it with the Mapping-option (like Mapping=tex-text). You can find examples of mapping files in your texmf tree in \fonts\misc\xetex\fontmapping. teckit is here http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=TECkitDownloads

Btw: The output you provided was useful. It told me e.g. the exact name of your font (and its type), it also excluded some other source for font problems.

Answer 2

Have you checked whether the version of Century Gothic you have on your system is in OpenType format? The reason I ask is that I believe that most "advanced" font-related features of XeLaTeX require the font to be in OpenType format.

Update:

I've now obtained copies of both the "ordinary" (truetype) font "Century Gothic" -- filename "gothic.ttf" -- and the opentype font "Century Gothic Standard", filename "CenturyGothicStd.otf". I should note that apart from the ligature support detailed below, the two fonts seem to be almost identical; the ttf version features 244 glyphs, the otf version has 251. (Well, besides the "Standard" opentype font, there's also a "Pro" opentype version, but I don't have that font.) They're both sold by Monotype and, in particular, both fonts possess the "f-l" and "f-i" ligature pairs. Furthermore, neither font features the "f-f" ligature pair or the "f-f-l" and "f-f-i" ligature triplets.

With the truetype font loaded with the command \setmainfont{Century Gothic}, I get the following output when running the OP's MWE:

the same as the OP did. In contrast, with the opentype font -- loaded with \setmainfont{Century Gothic Std} -- I get

(In both cases, I've also provided the instruction \addfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX}.)

Hence, at least for the case of Monotype's releases of the "Century Gothic" font in truetype and opentype formats, it does appear to be the case that the .otf version provides more "services" (at least when accessed from xelatex) than the .ttf version does.

Answer 3

Well, I had a similar problem with a different font, and I found I could make it work by using what would in your case be RawFeature={+liga}. I can't test it because I don't have Century Gothic on my system, but I suspect it might work as follows:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX, RawFeature={+liga,+hlig,+dlig}]{Century Gothic}
\begin{document}
ff fi fl
\end{document}