"font-variant: small-caps" corrupted with letterspacing on iOS

Have you got a link to an example page where this happens? Does it only happen with wp-Typography or with other uses of font-variant: small-caps?

This happens only when wp-typography is active, doesn’t when it isn’t.

I’ve also cranked up my Mac to test Safari there, and it is the same. So I was incorrect in thinking it was particular to iOS.

Here is an example:
https://ghoiren.net/2016/01/hello-world/

Thanks. Have you got a screenshot of the broken rendering? What versions of Safari are affected? (On El Capitan the page looks normal.)

I’ve added before-and-after screenshots of iOS:
https://ghoiren.net/2016/01/hello-world/

iOS version 8.4.1, with whatever is the current version of Safari.

My Mac is OS X 10.9.5, with Safari 9.0.3.

(For what it’s worth: I’m accustomed to waiting for months to get a response on other WordPress forums, and would have been happy to wait here. Your active support of this plugin is very much appreciated.)

Can you try to just disable hyphenation to see if the bug still occurs without it? If so, we at least know what’s causing this. It might be similar to https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150329.

Unchecking “Enable hyphenation” had no effect.

However, unchecking “Add workaround for Safari hyphenation bug” *did* eliminate the spacing. I went back and forth a few times to be sure.

Oh, OK. Then this is indeed a Safari bug related to ligature rendering. You can try to disable all ligatures via -webkit-font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures; or -webkit-font-feature-settings: "liga" 0;, maybe this will prevent the hyphenation issue while not triggering the small-caps bug.

I’m not having luck with this, unfortunately:
https://ghoiren.net/2016/01/hello-world/

I suppose I’d be happy to leave that workaround unchecked, but I don’t know what the consequences might be.

When ligatures are enabled (default), Safari has problems rendering when a line contains both a ligature and a soft hyphen.

I have determined that there are two (and only two) ways I can make this bug happen in Safari/Mavericks or Safari/iOS: Either check “Add workaround for Safari hyphenation bug” or apply this CSS rule to my small-caps text:
-webkit-font-feature-settings: "liga" 0;

Applying the *other* CSS rule to my small-caps text does not produce the bug:
-webkit-font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures;

But does this mean that if I leave the Safari workaround option unchecked, and I want to keep ligatures for the rest of the page, then I am leaving open the possibility that the ligature bug will appear for some people, on certain configurations of Safari?

On the other hand if I’m not seeing a ligature bug anywhere else with the font I’m using, then I really don’t have a need for that workaround to begin with?

Yes, that about sums it up.