Ligatures with Century Schoolbook L in xetex [Ubuntu]

Question

I don't get any ligatures, like the fi ligature.

I'm using:

• URW Century Schoolbook L (afai can determine anyway)

• XeTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.2-0.9995.2 (TeX Live 2009/Debian)

• Ubuntu 10.04

This is the relevant part, I think:

\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{wasysym}
\setsansfont{FluxBold}
\setmonofont[Scale=0.85]{Bera Sans Mono}
\setmainfont{Century Schoolbook L}

If I drop fontspec and use fouriernc it works fine, I get ligatures, but I can't specify the other fonts. If I use both fouriernc and fontspec, this seems to clash so I get neither New Century Schoolbook, nor Century Schoolbook L.

I've also tries things like:

\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text, Ligatures={Common, Rare, Historical}]{Century Schoolbook L}

To no avail. Setting Ligatures=TeX fails, it doens't know what TeX ligatures are. I've tried switching to luatex, but it seems to not be able to use the fontspec package.

I'm stuck.

Answer 1

I can't get ligatures to work with Century Schoolbook L or URW Bookman L. This might be missing ligatures in the font or maybe doesn't support Type 1 fonts that well.

The TeX Gyre Schola font is based on Century Schoolbook L and contains proper ligatures. If it is installed in the TeX directory structure, you have to use

\setmainfont[
    Ligatures=TeX,
    Extension=.otf,
    UprightFont= *-regular,
    BoldFont=*-bold,
    ItalicFont=*-italic,
    BoldItalicFont=*-bolditalic
]{texgyreschola}

to call it (or just copy the font to ~/.fonts).

However, this does not work with XeTeX/fontspec included in Ubuntu 10.10 (and so presumably also not with 10.04). If you want to use XeTeX and fontspec, I strongly recommend that you always use the newest versions. Installing TeX Live directly (i.e. not via the package manager) is not too hard (just download the installation script, run it and set the path) and will give you the newest versions of the TeX engines and packages.

Answer 2

Hey
I don't have the font Century Schoolbook L but using your code I get fine ligatures when using Minion Pro as main font.
Are you sure that the version of Century Schoolbook L supports ligatures?

My test file:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{wasysym}
%\setsansfont{FluxBold}
%\setmonofont[Scale=0.85]{Bera Sans Mono}
%\setmainfont{Century Schoolbook L}
\setmainfont[Ligatures={Common, Rare, Historical}]{Minion Pro}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Test}
Hello lets find some ligatures!
\end{document}

Sincerely,
Richard