Python Unicode handling wins again -- mostly

[Gregory Ewing]

wxjmfauth at gmail.com wrote:
> And do you know the origin of this typographical feature?
> Because, mechanically, the dot of the "i" broke too often.
> 
> In my opinion, a very plausible explanation.

It doesn't sound very plausible to me, because there
are a lot more stand-alone 'i's in English text than
there are ones following an f. What is there to stop
them from breaking?

It's more likely to be simply a kerning issue. You
want to get the stems of the f and the i close together,
and the only practical way to do that with mechanical
type is to merge them into one piece of metal.

Which makes it even sillier to have an 'ffi' character
in this day and age, when you can simply space the
characters so that they overlap.

-- 
Greg