ligatures in Markdown preview when calt is set to false

[jaczanet]

Summary

ligatures are ON in Markdown preview when calt is set to false everywhere in settings.

Steps to trigger the problem:

1. Update settings

"ui_font_family": "Zed Plex Mono",
  "buffer_font_features": {
    "calt": false
  },
  "ui_font_features": {
    "calt": false
  }

2. Try in any Markdown file

<!-- Some ligatures examples, the list continues... -->
=>
->
<=>
<=
=>
!=

3. Open Markdown preview

Actual Behavior:

If I set calt to false, ligatures don't turn off.

Expected Behavior:

If I set calt to false, I expect ligatures to turn off.

Please Note:

calt being set to false doesn't seem relevant to the issue, but it is the ui font instead: changing the font to any other (that I tried) doesn't reproduce the issue, and even when calt is set to true everywhere, ligatures do not show up in Markdown preview with any other font, but only with Zed Plex Mono.

P.S.

Honestly, even if it is an unexpected behaviour, I like it. Could we make it an user-facing setting?

Zed Version and System Specs

Zed: v0.180.2 (Zed) OS: macOS 15.3.2 Memory: 16 GiB Architecture: aarch64

[notpeter]

Yes, this is an issue. Zed should ideally support one or both of:

1. Not showing ligatures by default
2. The ability to control font features for markdown preview

Thanks for reporting.

[jaczanet]

Not sure in which update this was changed, but now it's possible to toggle font features in markdown preview with this setting (only when using a specific font):

"ui_font_family": ".ZedMono",
 "ui_font_features": {
    "calt": false // or true
  }

When it's set to false ligatures are off and when it is set to true ligatures are working. Problem is: this is not consistent among different fonts, at the moment I found out it only works with .ZedMono (formerly Zed Plex Mono). Overall it's a progress: now there's a way to toggle ligatures with one specific font, rather than before that it was possible with none.

But its behaviour it's still unpredictable: try to use the settings included in this comment, set calt to true, then change the ui_font_family and you'll see ligatures will turn on or off according to when you change the font and not when you change the calt value. It makes little sense that ligatures behaviour changes when not their related setting is updated but another.

[github-actions[bot]]

Hi there! 👋 We're working to clean up our issue tracker by closing older bugs that might not be relevant anymore. If you are able to reproduce this issue in the latest version of Zed, please let us know by commenting on this issue, and it will be kept open. If you can't reproduce it, feel free to close the issue yourself. Otherwise, it will close automatically in 14 days. Thanks for your help!

[jaczanet]

Hello, the issue is still relevant. Please don't automatically close it.