What is the advantage of exporting the "Legacy Kern Table"

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Jonne Haven
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What is the advantage of exporting the "Legacy Kern Table"

Post by Jonne Haven »

I've been exporting all my fonts with "Legacy 'kern' Table enabled but it does make my font larger in size. I'm wondering what exactly is this feature and what does it do...is it necessary?

Thanks,

Jonne
MikeW
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Re: What is the advantage of exporting the "Legacy Kern Table"

Post by MikeW »

There are applications that still do not use gpos but do use the kern table.
Jonne Haven
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Re: What is the advantage of exporting the "Legacy Kern Table"

Post by Jonne Haven »

So would you recommend exporting the font with Legacy enabled just in case? In your professional opinion?
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Re: What is the advantage of exporting the "Legacy Kern Table"

Post by Erwin Denissen »

No, better forget about that unless you already have a large user base from years ago who like to keep the word-breaks equal to how they were 10 years ago, or with software made 10 years ago.
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Jonne Haven
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Re: What is the advantage of exporting the "Legacy Kern Table"

Post by Jonne Haven »

Thanks Erwin!

Not exporting to Legacy cuts my font size in half. I won't export to that anymore.

Hope your new creation is selling like hot cakes!

Blessings,

Jonne
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: What is the advantage of exporting the "Legacy Kern Table"

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

MikeW wrote:There are applications that still do not use gpos but do use the kern table.
Yes. All Serif Applications, except for the latest PagePlus X9, so I do included the legacy kerning tables.

Pali Regular:

With Legacy Table: 1.08 MB (1,133,900 bytes) • 7z = 282 KB (288,968 bytes)
Without Table: 801 KB (820,328 bytes) • 7z = 259 KB (265,714 bytes)

Disk space is a non-issue. Download bandwidth is not a big issue. Kerning not working in some applications is a big issue.
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Re: What is the advantage of exporting the "Legacy Kern Table"

Post by PJMiller »

It used to be that MS Word needed a legacy kern table and they were late to support GPOS but the more recent versions from 2010 onwards don't need it anymore.
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