Andreas Hauser wrote:
How do I go about finding a font that contains all my special characters?
That's the problem, and it depends somewhat on what you are doing. If your text will be historical, you will probably need lots of old ligatures and abbreviation glyphs that may not be available in any current font at all. If you text is descriptive, perhaps you can get by using one of the SIL fonts (or perhaps even something mundane like arial). In both cases, it will be worth the effort to write/email to the editor or publisher of a reference work in the field that _does_ use the correct font, or failing that, to talk to a university that has a large interest in the field you are after. Scholars are generally willing to share such information. Searching on the internet is a madmans' work. Almost all fonts online (whether from big foundries or cheap/free amateur works) are intended for typical uses (i.e. advertisments), so if they contain a long s at all, it will definately not be used by default, and there will be almost certainly no ligatures.
I have at least ſ (long s), aͤ (a^e SMALL e ABOVE), ʒ etc. Most are from a historical context. And a lot of ligatures. As I understand Mac OS is able to produce arbitrary ligatures. But will this work on a Linux too?
It will only work if the ligutares glyphs are present in the font. This is true on linux as well as on osx. Best wishes, Taco