On the list that terminals need to do, being more typographically aware is on the very bottom on my list of priorities.

They could start by not mimicking 50+ year old hardware terminals down to arcane (and performance killing) details, supporting better and more powerful autocomplete and similar interactions, inline images, full colors, and so on...

It’s important to some people but probably not a majority. Ligatures are a best effort kind of thing. Where trade offs must be made, such as drawing performance, I choose to let the user make that choice.