Agreed. I assume this is font ligature magic, like when you type "Zapfino" in Zapfino?

Zapfino is actually much more complex than what this is doing. Zapfino has glyph variants - that is, it can display the same set of glyphs multiple ways. Ligatures just combine specific successive glyphs into a new glyph.

Yes, but the word "Zapfino" in Zapfino is one long ligature. That's what the GP was talking about.

I understood that - I wanted to dispel the idea of anything more complex than a ligature.