<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On 19 Jun 2007, at 6:23 am, John Was wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS">Hello</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Hello John,</DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial Unicode MS">I wonder if there exists, or there are plans for, a facility to modify the kerns of a Unicode and/or outline font within XeTeX without specifically editing the font</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>It's a request that has come up a few times, in varying forms. There's no current work in this area (unless someone is working on a patch that I don't know about!), but it's something I would like to get to eventually. The actual design of such a feature is still open to suggestions...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS">something like:</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS"></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS"> <DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS">\myfont = "Minion Pro"[:myfont.krn] at 11pt</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS"></FONT> </DIV> <DIV>The file myfont.krn would be a list of user-defined kerns to be applied to \myfont only within the document</DIV></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Yes, this sort of thing would be possible, in principle - though note that kerns will have to be expressed in terms of glyphs, not characters. (Consider a font with many swash variants of "T" - you don't necessarily want the same kerns between each of these and adjacent glyphs.)</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS"><DIV>If this works in principle, it could be extended to include automatic invocation of ligatures,<BR></DIV></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>This is somewhat less likely to happen, because of the added complexity of making it interact properly with the existing layout features in the font (e.g, GPOS kern features). Additional kern pairs could be applied after the standard layout is complete, as a final step. Glyph changes here, on the other hand, ought to interact with the rest of the OpenType layout process - in ways that would require some careful consideration.</DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS"><DIV> perhaps even from a different font<BR></DIV></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>And this is *much* less likely to be implemented. At this point, it's starting to sound like building a whole new version of the "virtual font" infrastructure. I don't think that's a good way forward in the modern world. Better to focus on creating (or stimulating the creation of) fonts that do actually contain the character & glyph repertoire and behavior you need.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>JK</DIV></DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>