[XeTeX] Custom kerning

John Was john.was at ntlworld.com
Tue Oct 6 15:38:01 CEST 2009


Hello

I expect it's too late for the official 2009 TeXLive, but I thought I'd reiterate my request for some facility to tweak the kerning pairs in any given font by an external command - at font loading this would be something like 'kering=mykerns', analogous to 'mapping=tex-text', the 'mykerns' file being something that users could compile for themselves according to a specified syntax.

The issue has come up again recently when I moved over to the Open Type version of Monotype's Imprint font (Imprint Pro) for continuity of appearance in a periodical as I changed over from an old EmTeX system to XeTeX:  disappointingly, the italic font continues to give bad spacing between lower-case 'r' and some following letters, most noticeably 'a', which is a nuisance as there is often citation of books with words like 'morality', 'fragility' in the title.  The flaw always did exist in the font since digitization, but it seems that the manufacturer hasn't made any improvements to the kerning.  Until they do (it could be a long wait), it would be most convenient just to specify some space between 'r' and 'a' (etc.), to avoid workarounds such as 'r\kern 1sp a', which of course breaks the hyphenation algorithm as well as cluttering up the file.

I seem to recall that when it was discussed before, others said it would be useful, so I'm just trying to make sure it eventually moves from 'pending' to 'active' rather than 'ditched'...

Best


John
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