Comparing what Wordpad or MS Paint are doing to what the Xara render engine is doing is comparing apples to oranges. Those applications are just calling GDI - not Kernel, that plays no part - to render some text for them at a given position. Xara has to fetch the glyph outline and use it as a vector graphic. Try getting Wordpad or Paint to fill text with a bitmap, or 3D extrude it.

WRT ligatures, I can use the ae, oe and fl ones from fonts where they are present, are you guys referring to some kind of custom ligatures?