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A
Anonymous
October 5, 2010
Answered

To kern or not to kern: that is the existential predicament

  • October 5, 2010
  • 3 replies
  • 2186 views

I have just realized that the Cambria font I picked for body, list, etc. text looks funny not because I'm going blind but because Frame is "over kerning" combinations like ld. I'd like to keep the Cambria, but am at a loss how to repair.

So a question for reading + comprehension experts: would I be better off simply turning kerning off, or would it be better to throw in a little negative spread as well?

I'm assuming there is no easy way to adjust some kerning pairs while leaving the best ones, such as Wa alone?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Arnis Gubins

    FWIW, FM uses only the kerning values defined in the font and there is no easy way to create custom kerning values/tables as in other DTP applications. If some kerning values look wonky, then that's the way the font creator designed them. FM does have horizontal micro-adjustment of spacings available, but you would need to script a solution (i.e. use FrameScript)  in order to consistently apply the adjustments between character pairs.

    One word of caution in using FM's Spread. If you start exceeding values of 5% (in either direction) you may be affecting the ability to search for terms in PDFs generated from these documents.

    3 replies

    M
    Mike Wickham
    Inspiring
    October 6, 2010

    It might not be a kerning problem with your font or FrameMaker. The

    following setting in maker.ini affects display of apparent character kerning

    on screen:

    DisplayUsingPrinterMetrics=On

    Also, zoom level affects the appearance on screen greatly. I wouldn't try

    kerning characters unless the zoom was around 400% or more. Monitors are

    only around 96 ppi and so kerning doesn't display properly until you blow

    things up and more pixels can be devoted to each glyph.

    Arnis Gubins
    Arnis GubinsCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    October 5, 2010

    FWIW, FM uses only the kerning values defined in the font and there is no easy way to create custom kerning values/tables as in other DTP applications. If some kerning values look wonky, then that's the way the font creator designed them. FM does have horizontal micro-adjustment of spacings available, but you would need to script a solution (i.e. use FrameScript)  in order to consistently apply the adjustments between character pairs.

    One word of caution in using FM's Spread. If you start exceeding values of 5% (in either direction) you may be affecting the ability to search for terms in PDFs generated from these documents.

    Michael_Müller-Hillebrand
    Michael_Müller-Hillebrand
    Legend
    October 5, 2010

    John,

    Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel are the new Microsoft fonts that were presented with Vista. They are rather fresh (compared to Arial, Times New Roman) and have glyphs for many many languages. So they are a good choice.

    But at least Cambria uses top-notch, state-of-the-art OpenType kerning, a feature that is not understood by the standard Windows font engine (which is used by FrameMaker and older versions of MS Office).

    So if you do not want funky letter spacing my recommendation is to switch of kerning when using Cambria with FrameMaker. The font looks still good…

    - Michael

    A
    Anonymous
    October 5, 2010

    Michael,

    Thanks. I wondered whether Frame wasn't playing nicely with the newer Microsoft fonts.

    I am running Windows 7 on my computer and using Microsoft Office 2007. Are you saying that Frame is still using an older version of the font engine? Or does it use whatever engine is installed in the OS (which in my case seems as if it ought to be a newer version)?

    For what it's worth, I did turn off kerning for all the body size text & given your comment about the font engine, sounds as if I ought to turn it off for larger font sizes (chapter titles) as well. I'll inspect them more closely.

    Thanks for the info.

    J
    Jack DeLand
    Inspiring
    October 5, 2010

    I use a spread of -1.0% and a stretch of 94% with Pair Kern on. It looks right to me; YMMV.

    JD

    A
    Anonymous
    October 5, 2010

    Thanks, Jack. Are you talking about Cambria specifically? I get the impression that pairs are shifted different amounts in different fonts in Frame's "standard" kerning. My previous Garamond font looked fine with kerning.

    J
    Jack DeLand
    Inspiring
    October 5, 2010

    John,

    I tried it on Cambria before writing, have used those same settings with Helvetica type (the real stuff, from Linotype) as well, with good results. I have a feeling there is a lot more I could be doing to get a "typeset" look, but am still a newbie.

    Jack

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