automatic kerning wizard

[benacarter]

I'm a little lost on a couple of things in the kern wizard...

what exactly is the minimum absolute kerning value?
what does this setting mean in the wizard?

also need some clear explanation of allowing positive kerning values.

thanks for any help

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Kerning reduces the white space between letter pairs. If the kerning value would be less than the minimum value that you set, auto-kerning doesn't bother to kern that pair.

Positive kerning increases white space between some letter pairs. This is off by default.

[vanisaac]

what exactly is the minimum absolute kerning value?
what does this setting mean in the wizard?

If you have two characters that that the computer says are only 25 funits from perfect spacing (the wizard would only kern 25 funits), then it may very well be close enough for you. This setting lets you tell the computer "look, if you're going to kern this spacing by only 30 funits, then don't even bother - that's good enough for me." Kerning takes up processing, and the kern table has a limited size - some not quite perfect spacing may be acceptable and even advantagious for your font.

Now, even though I've said all this, it is still vitally important to manually check the kerns the wizard made. Some of them will not be right, especially with letters like A, F, K, T, V, W, X, and Y.