Fontspec and Ligatures

Question

I understand that if I typeset using Lualatex or Xelatex, and include the following in the preamble:

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{XYZ}

Then system-wide non-latex fonts can be used (substituted for XYZ in the above).

My question is, by using fontspec, does this mean that ligatures and kerning, that make LaTeX document otherwise of a higher 'typeset' quality would be essentially discarded for the convenience of getting access to a larger number of fonts?

Does this mean that in the above, one is essentially settling for 2nd best?

Answer 1

A modern opentype font has many ligatures and font shaping possibilities specified within the font. In addition if you also want classic TeX convenience ligatures such as -- to ndash you can use

\setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX]{XYZ}