in that case you can best use a rather bare font i.e. no features at all apart from kerning and use dynamic features grouped
in lmtx there are other tricks too
\noleftligaturing \norightligaturing \noligaturing
and other conbtrols like
\noleftkerning etc
This is very useful. I'm thinking of writing an environment that switches: I like keeping the ease of typing normal characters, rather than getting glyphs directly, because it's easier to proof on screen in the editor.
writing about reproduced in my work and thus now can in the historical item itself.
one aspect is how ligatures are made: some fonts have single shapes, others use replacements and kerning of (then) multiple shapes
I think you wrote about this somewhere else and it got me interested in physical type from my period: it looks like some printers did some of the same things, sometimes! You might have a box of pre-composed ligatures, or not; you might take a knife to some letters to tweak them for specific uses, or not; you might even shave wrong-sized letters to fit them in where they don't belong. Those shaved down letters could end up back with their siblings, now shifting around during printing, or they could be tossed. The pre-composed ligatures might most often be made on matrices struck with the same punches as for the non-ligatured glyphs, but typefounders might re-strike matries now and then, so you might end up with slightly different pre-composed ligatures in different, or even the same, fount of type. It's nuts! Fred Smeijers writes about this a little bit in *Counterpunch*, but I had already started thinking about it because of ConTeXt. I wouldn't have known to look if it weren't for the typographical education you and your colleagues pass around; so, thank you again!