I found a neat little document today called Using and Managing Fonts in Mac OS X, and learned a pretty cool trick certain clever fonts can do: Apple Advanced Typography. Fonts employing AAT can automatically build their own ligatures. Image above shows how the word “Zapfino” in the typeface “zapfino” redraws itself as connectable consonants are typed.
Zapfino seems to be the only font I could discern that does this, but it’s pretty neat. Combined with built-in text shadows, one could make some cool logos without having to even open Photoshop.