i cant adjust the spacing in between letters, ive tried using ‘kerning’ and it doesn’t do anything. all i want is for them to over lap a little bit.
also, the font wont work in some programs, and sometimes it stops working in the ones that it does work in.
this is my first and only font. i have the font file and the images i used to make the glyphs, if anyone needs them to fix the problem. if anyone could help, it would be great.
Hello ckysound … (interesting name)
Sorry it’s taken someone so long to respond.
Kerning is used to define the spacing relationship between two characters. That could work for what you’re after but might be very long and tedious. (ps: kerning should work for this, but it has to be used in a program that handles kerning. The FC Test Font (F5) doesn’t show kerning nor does Word Pad and some others. View/ToolsBars/Preview will show kerning.)
It is unusual that a font will work and then stop working. Probably need more explanation of the conditions when this happens. Rarely does something fontlike correct itself.
Glyph Spacing: Glyph spacing is composed of three pieces: a left margin line, the glyph and a right margin line. The goal then is to position the glyph between these two lines.
(There is probably a better description in the manual but I haven’t looked for it!)…
a. From the main display, click on a glyph to edit it and notice the two lines with small triangles on top. The one facing left becomes the “left margin” of the character space and the one with the right facing triangle is the “right margin”. You can move them to whereever you wish to establish the overall size of the space the glyph sits in (Advance Width) and at the same time this defines the relative position of the glyph in that space.
Obviously the left one (Left Side Bearing) can be moved to the left or to the right of the glyph left edge. That forces the glyph to “start early” (my phrase) and cause an overlap perhaps with the prior letter. Similarly the right guideline can be moved left or right of the right edge of the glyph causing white space after the end of the letter or having the letter extend past this margin (negative white space). The distance between these two guidelines again is called Advance Width (the horizontal size of the letter).
The two guidelines position the glyph early, late or in the center of the Advance Width of a letter.
b. To see numbers representing these positions, from the main display, select a glyph, right click and go to Properties. This menu shows most of the spacing dimensions. In the center-right will be a box Glyph Metrics. These values may be used to set the Left Side Bearing (as it says) which is the left margin of the glyph and the Advance Width which defines how wide the glyph is to be.
As you adjust these you will see the White Space Before and White Space After values change. They always will add up to the Advance Width. The Glyph Boundings show where the left-most and right-most points and highest and lowest points on the glyph are located. (Seeing these in numbers is helpful to align an entire font.)
c. You can globally change the White Space Before and White Space After values by using the Tools/Autometrics Wizard. You can set white space very easily here for every letter. (Only to 0 - it doesn’t go negative not - sure why). Once set then you can individually adjust font spacing using the first process.
I tend to align the entire font first just to correct anything strange and then individually adjust each glyph as needed. For the majority of fonts there is no individual adjustment needed – and kerning would be appropriate for AV, VA, WA or other pairs. Since you’re asking for a general overlap you will probably want to move each letter a different distance considering the shape of the letter.
Test Current Font (F5) lets you see your progress.
Hope this helps. \
DPape