[texhax] ligatures

[Karl Berry]

    Can someone tell me about the how the font metric files in TeX
    handles the ligature and kerning information.

See http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/knuth/texware/tftopl.web for
details of the binary tfm format, and pltotf.web (same directory) for
details of the ASCII pl format that corresponds to it.  Among many other
places.

For a user-level explanation, try The Metafontbook (mfbook.tex is
available on CTAN if you don't own it, but it's a lot easier to read in
print).

HTH,
k