Thank you for writing all that out, Martin. I've been using Fontforge for
over a decade and kerning had always perplexed me. The method you wrote
Metrics menu like a sane user would expect. Now that I see it like this it
makes sense. From a UI/UX standpoint I still think it's broken, but I know
how to make it work now.
On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 1:49 PM, Martin B. Brilliant <
Post by UltraPost by UltraSo what do I do? I find the kerning features difficult to use and
understand.
I donât find the kerning features difficult to use and understand. Maybe
thatâs because I donât use the metrics window or the metrics menu.
First, Encoding / Compact so I wonât have to search through empty space to
find glyphs later.
Element / Font Info / Lookups, GPOS tab. (You can do this any time to get
back to where you left off.)
Hit the Add Lookup button. Choose Type: Pair Position (kerning).
<New>, donât click <New>, click the down arrow next to it and select
Horizontal Kerning. <New> changes to Kern.
Accept the default Lookup Name or change it if you wish. Hit the OK button.
Back in the GPOS tab, you now have a lookup table selected. Hit the Add
Subtable button. You can OK the default name.
Now you have a window with a lot of choices. The first is Use individual
kerning pairs vs. Use a matrix of kerning classes. If you want to kern
references along with the originals, choose classes.
Leave the checkmark on Fontforge will guess kerning classes for selected
glyphs. Leave the rest of the parameters as they are until you have reason
to try different values.
You can select all the glyphs, and delete classes later, or you can select
only the glyphs you want to kern, but select all you want at the same time,
Fontforge will put them in classesâunless youâre working with different
alphabets that you donât want to kern together (like Latin, Greek,
CyrillicâŠ.).
When you hit the OK button you get a big window with some parameters on
top, two lists of classes, and a matrix below. When you select a box in the
matrix you can see how the pair is kerned. If you donât like it you can
adjust the Kern Offset in the box above the display of the glyph pair.
If anything screwy happens, and it will, hit the Cancel button. Then
double-click the subtable (hit the plus sign next to the table if you donât
see it) and youâre back in the big window. If you do a lot of work without
trouble itâs a good idea to hit OK and come back, so you donât lose your
work when something screwy happens.
The metrics window can be used later as a final check but I donât like to
make adjustments in that window. It can be done but it keeps asking if I
want to kern the class or the pair and picky stuff like that. You can try
it and see if you like it; I donât. I do all my kerning as above: Element,
Font Info, Lookups, GPOS tab, expand by hitting the plus sign, double-click
the subtable.
I hope this works for you.
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