[XeTeX] Typographical question: xetex' default wordspacing (\fontdimen2--7)

[Jonathan Kew]

On 26 Jun 2006, at 7:52 pm, Joachim Trinkwitz wrote:

> Am 24.06.2006 um 12:22 schrieb Jonathan Kew:
>
>> If it's an old Type 1 font, xetex doesn't currently support kerning
>
> Ouch, this is bad news for me, as most of my commercial fonts are
> Type 1 ...
>
> How old is "old" in this context? Are there "newer" Type 1 fonts,
> which are supported?

No, that's "old Type 1" as opposed to "new OpenType/CFF", the 21st  
century way of using Postscript curves to draw glyphs!

Of course, if you have traditional Type 1 fonts, you may be using  
them with TFM files, fontmap entries, etc., and all that should still  
work. But that doesn't bring you into the Unicode world.

One thing that I have in mind is to enable xetex to read an AFM file  
along with a PFB, and thus support kerning for such fonts, but I'm  
afraid this hasn't reached the top of the to-do list yet....

> Maybe another naive question: would it help to convert my fonts in
> OTF, e.g. with fontforge or another software?

If FontForge or other software can import the kerning data from an  
AFM file (I assume your Type 1 fonts came with AFMs), and then  
include that in an OTF version, then yes.

I'm fairly sure FontLab can do this (though I've never tried); I  
don't use FontForge, so can't speak for it, but my guess is that it  
probably has such a feature.

JK