[XeTeX] OpenType Fonts and Kerning: need mindtuning

Kenneth Reid Beesley krbeesley at gmail.com
Mon Jan 5 19:19:24 CET 2009


I'm new to kerning and need some mindtuning:

Using FontForge, I've created a new OpenType font for the Deseret  
Alphabet, and have tried to define
kerning for various problematic glyph pairs.  I then use the OpenType  
font in Xe(La)TeX.

I'm working on Mac OS X 10.5.5 with XeTeX 3.141592-0.996 (Web2C  
7.5.6), kpathsea version 3.5.6

 From FontForge, I generate the OpenType font (presumably with kerning  
information), install it, and then restart.
I use the new font successfully in a Xe(La)TeX test file, but some of  
the problematic pairs are not rendered as
closely as I'd like (they are not rendered with the kerning that I  
tried to indicate).

Questions:

1.  Is there some limit in XeTeX on how much two glyphs can be  
squeezed together using kerning?

2.  Do I need to save the OpenType font in some special way? with some  
special options?  (For example,
FontForge allows you to save a font with "Old style 'kern'"--does  
Xe(La)TeX need such old-style kerning
tables?)

Thanks in anticipation,

Ken

******************************
Kenneth R. Beesley, D.Phil.
P.O. Box 540475
North Salt Lake, UT
84054  USA







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