Font Forum

I stumbled upon a problem using a font I edited in FC. This font keeps the original kerning tables, nothing is changed there, but in the edited font the kerning doesn't work in Word, while the original version works correctly. What can cause this behaviour? BTW, it's not a version 7 issue: I also notice it in versions I edited using an earlier version of FC.

Thank you for reporting this issue. Can you send the font file(s) to us, along with a sample document which shows the problem? I believe you have my email address. If not do PM me.

Thank you for sending the font file to me. I've opened it in FontCreator and noticed it doesn't contain any kerning data. Have you send me the correct file, or is this the reason why you don't see kerning?

I'm afraid I *did* send you a wrong file, but for some reason the problem shows up also in a font which according to Font Creator *does* have lots of kerning pairs.

Confirmed, and fixed in version 7.0.1.456, released just a minute ago.

Although there is nothing wrong with the font file (technically speaking), it seems Microsoft Word refuses to process any kerning from the kern table if it detects one or more of the glyphs within a kern pair is not mapped to a Unicode character. I realize such pair is not useful for Word, but I really don't understand why it then complete ignores all kerning. Seems like a major flaw in Microsoft Word.

I've made some changes into FontCreator that will ignore such pairs when exporting the kern table. The GPOS kerning table is not affected by this, and will continue to include all pairs.

I can confirm that the problem is corrected. Thank you, for looking into it.

Erwin Denissen wrote:Although there is nothing wrong with the font file (technically speaking), it seems Microsoft Word refuses to process any kerning from the kern table if it detects one or more of the glyphs within a kern pair is not mapped to a Unicode character. I realize such pair is not useful for Word, but I really don't understand why it then complete ignores all kerning. Seems like a major flaw in Microsoft Word.

That's just crazy. If it detects that a glyph is not mapped to a Unicode character, it should ignore that kerning pair, and only that pair. This does indeed seem like a major flaw.

Word has long history of problems with kerning. Years ago I added hundreds of kerning pairs *manually* only to find out that Word doesn't support the kerning of characters in the Greek Extended set. Worst of all: this behaviour isn't documented anywhere.