Wpf: Hyphen based ligatures don't work in WPF

[clairernovotny]

See https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/issues/259 for the full issue description.

Would be good to get this fixed for .NET Core 3.

[DrPizza]

This makes Visual Studio very sad. -> is a very common symbol in C++, and I don't get pretty arrows for it.

[Fell]

I've tracked this bug through various different platforms now, and it would be really great if it could get fixed. It's a small thing, but it would make everyone's programming life a little more fun.

[tanooki-games]

Problem persists in Visual Studio 2019.1

[HolyChen]

in vs2017 too, but not in vs code

[be5invis]

I suspect there's something wrong in TextItemizer that it breaks out hyphens (-) as individual run.

[weltkante]

I understand this originally was probably by design, but considering that hyphen based ligatures are a desired feature in some fonts, that original "by design" is not appropriate anymore and needs to be revisited. I would have contributed by researching the implementation and proposing a fix, but considering the text engine is going to stay closed source this really needs to be done by MS.

[AmadeusW]

~Windows Terminal, VS Code and JetBrains all render the text better than Visual Studio, which uses the WPF renderer. Text rendered by WPF is less crisp than other technologies; horizontal lines are thinner, and vertical lines are thicker.~

~I heard that WPF used by Visual Studio uses ~2010 version of DWrite, and there was no demand to update the version of WPF used in .NET Framework. I would like this comment to serve as proof of demand for a fix on behalf of Visual Studio Editor's users and developers.~

~Some of the user feedback:
https://www.reddit.com/r/VisualStudio/comments/ev5b2u/is_there_an_editor_text_readability_fix_already/
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/44061/some-programming-ligatures-do-not-work.html
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/899361/editor-readability.html?childToView=904574#comment-904574~

[AmadeusW]

Edit: I moved the previous comment to appropriate location: #2025

[weltkante]

Just to be clear, the last two comments are off-topic and have nothing to do with hyphen-based ligatures (which is what this issue is about). The text layouting is unrelated to the font rendering.

[AmadeusW]

Thanks for clarification @weltkante. I thought that setting layout and rendering are handled in the same piece of code. I will move my comments to #2025

[tanooki-games]

Now both are closed. I think one should stay open, or not?

[weltkante]

2025 has received some fix and this issue is still open because its not fixed yet. Not sure what exactly you mean?

[FluorineDog]

Any progress on this issue?

[FractalMatt]

Given Visual Studio .Net Core is open source.. is it possible to get into the source code and find and fix the bug for them and submit a pull request? Particularly if it's a WPF bug, seems like it might be possible.

[weltkante]

Neither Visual Studio is open source, nor the part of WPF that does text processing. I already mentioned this above, Microsoft has to fix this bug, the community cannot help.