I understand the technical limitations of the number of kerning pairs, but is there a practical reason for limiting these? I am making a very ornate handwriting font with extended characters and ligatures and, even after careful attention to setting my bearings, I can’t get away with less than about 4000 kerning pairs. What problems can this cause to the user? Can I use the approx. 10,000 pairs technically available and expect no major problems in the way the font performs?
Thanks! Sue Derrick
Hi Sue,
I don’t think you’ll be able to see/ or measure any performance penalty from having so many kerning pairs. However a lot of kerning pairs is usually (not always) an indication, the font is poorly spaced or has other design flaws. Can you please post a screenshot of your font in action?
This link might help:
http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/some-guidence-please-spacing-kerning-and-metrics/1324/1
Take a look at these comments on Ministry Script, a font that apparently has 100,000 kerning pairs.