[XeTeX] Custom kerning

[John Was]

Dear Andrew

Thanks - I hadn't actually thought of that.  I *should* be able to set up an \if  .... \else  for italic, since (as a legacy from pre-Unicode days where special sorts such as italic yoghs had to be fetched from all sorts of locations) I habitually redefine \it so that it gives \italictrue \it .  I'll investigate when I get a moment.  (Though I'd still rather like to have a specific kerning option - which, as I forgot to say, should of course be _additional_ to the kerning tables that the font loads anyway.)

Best


John



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Andrew Moschou 
  To: Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms 
  Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 2:49 PM
  Subject: Re: [XeTeX] Custom kerning


  I think we can do this already, using \XeTeXinterchartoks (see XeTeX-reference.pdf) - just set it up so that whenever the string "ra" appears, the appropriate kern is inserted automatically, etc. I don't know if it is possible to get this working for italic text only, unless you redefine \itshape, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you know exactly what you are doing (or someone else can do it for you).

  Andrew



  2009/10/7 John Was <john.was at ntlworld.com>

    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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