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POWhich system component is responsible for binding Unicode ligatures in a Java application?
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  1. POWhich system component is responsible for binding Unicode ligatures in a Java application?
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    copied!<p>This is a "meta-question" which I came across when trying to find a better specification for another of my questions (<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/5994815/731040">Rendering Devanagari ligatures (Unicode) in Java Swing JComponent on Mac OS X</a>).</p> <p>What I don't quite understand as of yet is which "component" (for want of a better word) of a given system is responsible for displaying Unicode text in Java, and more specifically <em>ligatures</em>. </p> <p>As far as I understand, the following components have an influence on the process:</p> <ol> <li>The system character encoding (which for example is UTF-8 on Mac OS X 10.6, UTF-16 on Windows 7 (according to akira's comment on this <a href="https://superuser.com/questions/239810/setting-utf8-as-default-character-encoding-in-win7">superuser.com post</a>)).</li> <li>The Java <code>Charset</code> (which by default is MacRoman on Mac OS X 10.6, cp1252 on Windows 7).</li> <li>The font that is used to render the text, and that font's encoding information (as suggested by Donal Fellows on <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/5994815/731040">my other question</a>: <blockquote> <p>"fonts include information about what encoding they're using".</p> </blockquote></li> <li>Obviously whether the characters to render are present at the respective Unicode code points.</li> </ol> <p>So if a string of Unicode characters doesn't display <em>correctly</em> (as seen in my other question, s.a.), where would the problem most probably be? I.e., what "component" (what would a better word be?) is responsible for "binding" the ligature, its composition?</p> <p>Thank you very much in advance and please let me know should you need more information.</p>
 

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