Where are the ligatures?

Richard Gilpin wrote:

What is odd is that the ligatures appear in response to a search but not when I display the Latin fonts directly:

Character Viewer doesn't really display fonts, it displays characters. In general ligatures are not characters, but are created by fonts when appropriate characters are typed separately and the font's ligatures settings have been set appropriately.

The ligature "characters" you see when you do a search are in a different area of unicode called "presentation forms". They are present for historical reasons, but you really should not use them, as they can mess up searching operations and cause other problems. Instead rely on the font to create them automatically

To see what a font contains, you should use Font Book, and then View > Repertoire. But in general you can't input ligatures from Font Book, you need to use the font typography or ligature settings in the app you are writing with.

For apple stuff, go to format/font/show fonts and click on the gear wheel and then on typography.

but not when I display the Latin fonts directly

That's because "Latin" refers to the base characters; A-z, numbers and standard punctuation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet

It also extends into standard accented marks.

Typing Characters of any Latin-based Alphabet in One Step

Past that, you're not looking at Latin characters.

You mean these?

The Format menu appears in apps that can edit text. Such as TextEdit.

You're welcome.