Kerning isn't working

woollymammoth · Post by **woollymammoth** » Thu Jun 24, 2004 4:24 am

I am a newbie to Font Creator and do not know all the jargon. Currently I am using FCP 3.1 -ancient, but it's what I have. I have created a font to use in my preschool classroom, sort of like the old ball and stick font used in some elementary schools. I am having a problem with kerning. I have applied auto-kerning and all the kerning pairs look fine, but when I try to use the font in Word nothing is kerned. Yes, I have checked the kerning for fonts box in Format>Fonts>Character Spacing. What am I missing? Or is this problem because I'm using an old version of FCP? I am using Word 2000 with Windows XP.

Dick Pape · Post by **Dick Pape** » Fri Jun 25, 2004 2:54 am

Hello woolymammoth ... (good name!)

This is really an Erwin question as I don't know "FCP 3.1 -ancient" that you refer to.

Why don't you download the most current vn and try again? There's a 30-day trial which you could use to validate your procedure. If it works in the most current but not in the "ancient" you know what you have to do! Worst case, you could do the uninstall after having seen the power of Version 4! (I assume you have backups of 3.1 to fall back to!)

There have been enough changes in Vn 4 where I think an upgrade would make your font life a whole lot more productive.

Dick Pape

woollymammoth · Post by **woollymammoth** » Fri Jun 25, 2004 7:20 pm

Hi Dick

Thanks for the suggestion on upgrading to vn 4. It does have some cool new and improved features. But... kerning still isn't working in Word.

Dick Pape · Post by **Dick Pape** » Fri Jun 25, 2004 9:58 pm

Oh woollym .... (if I can be familiar!)

We should try to isolate the problem to either your new font or kerning in general.

I tried the standard Arial (open type) in Word 2000 and didn't see kerning on pairs AT, AV, AW, AY (mine has 909 kerning pairs defined).

The MS Word kerning flag was unchecked: See Format/ Font/ Character Spacing. So I checked "Kerning For Fonts" at (12) Points and Above. Immediately, kerning set in and everything was fine.

Compare that test (Arial) with your font and see if there is a difference. Of course, if both are ok we're home free. If Arial is still wrong then Word's the problem. If your font is wrong, then your font is wrong and talk to Erwin!

Good luck

Dick

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Sun Jun 27, 2004 2:32 pm

Kerning should work, unless your font is a Symbol font. See the manual for more information about kerning:

http://www.high-logic.com/manual/kerning_overview.html

If this information does not lead to a solution, send the font file to me, so I can investigate the problem.

woollymammoth · Post by **woollymammoth** » Sun Jun 27, 2004 6:49 pm

After much experimenting, I seem to have resolved the kerning problem. I ended up copying and pasting each glyph into a new font window and installing the font under a new name. Now kerning is working in Word. When I tried copying and pasting a range of glyphs kerning still did not work in Word, but when copying one at a time it did. I have no idea what magic this performed on my font, but ,hey, it worked.

Thanks for your help!

TinaraHarper · Post by **TinaraHarper** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 2:40 am

I am having a similar problem with kearning. After playing with the kearning problems in Word, I was able to fix them in Word, but um, well, on a different issue, I installed over Arial and so when it shows on webpages and stuff, there's no kearning, despite my having gone through most of the 900 pairs!

TinaraHarper · Post by **TinaraHarper** » Tue Jan 04, 2005 2:03 am

I am still having a problem with kearning. I made circles around all of the Arial letters and numbers and I just want them to all be equally spaced when I type them. Is there a way to automatically do this, or do I have to type in every single possible permutation into the kerning file?

Bhikkhu Pesala · Post by **Bhikkhu Pesala** » Tue Jan 04, 2005 6:44 am

How are you adding the circles? The way I did it was to use composites to create Enclosed Alphanumerics. Since all of the symbols use the same large white circle, they are all the same width (2048 funits), and do not require kerning.

Font Creator 5 will add these symbols to your font automatically as long as it has the large white circle (9711), but you will still need to manually adjust the position of each letter or number within the circle. Kerning won't be necessary. The symbols could be assigned to shortcuts in Word to type them more easily.

In Font Creator 4.5 you can add each symbol manually using the Insert Glyph menu option. First insert large white circle into an empty glyph, then the letter or number, then adjust the position of the letter. After modifying the font metrics for one symbol, you can copy the metrics to all other symbols with Control C and Control E (paste special).

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Tue Jan 04, 2005 8:44 am

Kerning is not the solution (web browsers don't even support kerning). You should adjust both left side bearing and the right side bearing (or the advance width) of each glyph. These lines are shown by default but you can hide them through the "Show Bearings" button on the drawing toolbar. The left and right bearings can be changed by dragging them to their desired position.

You could also adjust the bearings when you right click a glyph in the overview window and select "Properties...". Here you can alter the left side bearing and the advance width.

TinaraHarper · Post by **TinaraHarper** » Tue Jan 04, 2005 9:55 pm

Ah, thanks! I'm not at all familiar with the jargon, but kearning was one thing that I did know and so I focused in on that. . . bearings, I'm assuming that those are the lines in there. . . That indeed is working!