How to disable Studio automatically combining letters into ligatures?

I recently upgraded from Studio 2019 to 2022. I suddenly realized that Studio is automatically combining "fi" and "ti" into one-character ligatures (and probably others too). It happens as I type, and it's also done on the imported text. It's not there in the original. I see that it only happens with certain fonts.

I don't want this. It makes it difficult to edit, since I'm always expecting to be able to delete one of the letters or type inbetween them. Also, I don't know if my client wishes this. I haven't been able to figure out how to turn this off. Searching turns up nothing. Can anyone help?

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  • Hello there, this is a bug on our side. For some reasons, yet unknown and out of our control, as the font API is the same that is used by MS Word, we get the two letters merged by default into a ligature. Until we investigate this properly, a workaround would be to place the caret at the tail end and press backspace to delete the "i" character, then type in what you want and add back manually the "i" letter. 

    One thing to note: if you were to use an actual ligature, not the mistake the API does here, then you wouldn't be able to type in between the two letters or delete them separately as they are treated as one and we currently support what the font has setup as default. This is the same for MS Word, with the exception that they have indeed a possibility to turn this off.

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    Dear Bogdan, another mystery methinks. Good that you noticed that, as hope arises to have this corrected in the future.

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  • I'm amazed of why the default behavior is to merge the 2 symbols. I think it's a font specific decision that the API respects. I do not control this, so the fix itself might be very tricky. I do not have full control not even over the actual font that is used. I do have a set of options I can enable/disable, but that will impact all fonts so I need to make sure I do not break ligatures for other languages. 

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  • I'm amazed of why the default behavior is to merge the 2 symbols. I think it's a font specific decision that the API respects. I do not control this, so the fix itself might be very tricky. I do not have full control not even over the actual font that is used. I do have a set of options I can enable/disable, but that will impact all fonts so I need to make sure I do not break ligatures for other languages. 

    Would using a default Windows font (currently Aptos or as previously Arial) for all languages using Latin or Latin like alphabet be an option? In my limited knowledge of the world maybe an option to give the user a choice of a serif and no-serif fonts at the Studio setup could be a valid way of working. Or maybe a choice from some few standard fonts for text display. This would apply then for all kind of views with or without visible formatting.

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  • We use by default Segoe UI, as it's Windows' default font. However, when we get a font recommendation from the original file we try to use it. If the document uses Aptos, then Trados will try to use Aptos for the target file as well. With all this it's up to the API to decide what font to use. My setting is treated as a suggestion. The reason is a very compelling one. If you are translating from Latin to Chinese, your Latin font won't be good enough for Chinese, so the API adapts and changes your font to what you have available on you PC. This example is extreme, but I saw font changes even for Latin to Latin languages. I saw very often that even for German to Polish I get different font usages. 

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  • I saw very often that even for German to Polish I get different font usages. 

    I do work daily in that direction. Font changes result here usually, when the source font used does not support Polish diacritics. Last time I've seen that (it is already more than 4 years ago), was a PPTX file, where the PL diacritics got inserted in a different font. However, this does not happen when working without formatting shown. In such case my impression is, that Arial is used to show the text. But I have checked now and this was a wrong impression. It really looks Segoe is the font used when no formatting is shown. A good one, very nicely legible.

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  • Yeah, one truth is that MS Office Word and by extension the DirectWrite API (the API I've been mentioning the whole time) will always try to draw your text as beautifully and readable as possible. So if a font would work better than your decision it will override it. Office might tell you that you are using Arial, but in reality it might use Arial Narrow or even completely other font family and you won't even have a clue it got swapped. They do this because having readable text is more important than using a specific font.

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  • Yeah, one truth is that MS Office Word and by extension the DirectWrite API (the API I've been mentioning the whole time) will always try to draw your text as beautifully and readable as possible. So if a font would work better than your decision it will override it. Office might tell you that you are using Arial, but in reality it might use Arial Narrow or even completely other font family and you won't even have a clue it got swapped. They do this because having readable text is more important than using a specific font.

    Horrible. It is me who wants to chose a font. Especially if I create my own documents, I will not use any of MS fonts. My font of choice is Myriad from Adobe. And Adobe products will hopefully keen what I want.

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  • Thy will not use a font that is vastly different than what you suggested. But many fonts are similar so the API uses what it considers best. In the case of Myriad, it might decide to use other San Serif fonts. The swap is done due to some glyphs not being ideal for your rendering, so it's not a decision based on a whim, but actual necessity.  Again, you will see Myriad font, everything will tell you it's Myriad font, but when rendering it might change due to various issues. It won't impact visuals or how things works, it just doesn't tell you upfront: "Hey so for these 2 words I had to swap the font with another one because your glyph is not available in Myriad"

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  • Thy will not use a font that is vastly different than what you suggested. But many fonts are similar so the API uses what it considers best. In the case of Myriad, it might decide to use other San Serif fonts. The swap is done due to some glyphs not being ideal for your rendering, so it's not a decision based on a whim, but actual necessity.  Again, you will see Myriad font, everything will tell you it's Myriad font, but when rendering it might change due to various issues. It won't impact visuals or how things works, it just doesn't tell you upfront: "Hey so for these 2 words I had to swap the font with another one because your glyph is not available in Myriad"

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