Review typographic text replacements

[MinchinWeb]

There are a number of text replacements that up the topographic value of the output documents. These should be reviewed. Of particular consideration:

• fractions
  • 1/2 to ½ -- there are a number of Unicode fractions already encoded, if you can find the right code point
  • alternately, it can be converted to superscript number + slash + subscript number, either in Unicode or as "normal" formatting. This has the advantage of covering less common fractions. In Unicode 1/2 to ¹/₂
  • care must be taken not to catch dates (10/22/24) or £sd notations
• "Number" as in No or No. --> № (technically the "Numero sign"); also as HTML №
• ligatures
  • st --> st
  • ft --> ſt
  • fl --> fl
  • fi --> fi
  • ff --> ff
  • some fonts might do this automatically, and might cover some other sets (like ffl or ffi)
  • +/- --> ± (or HTML ± or ± or ±
• degrees, as in temperature (put in the "proper" circle)
• spaces between numbers followed by units. e.g. "10 mm" or "3 pm"
• superscript after dates "Nov 1st" --> Nov 1^st
  • although this one might better be done in HTML as superscript, rather than Unicode superscript

With all, care must be taken to ensure that the code points are actually in the font we want to use.