Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!humu!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Why are postscript fonts so tight?
Message-ID: <4246@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 28 Jun 89 11:39:48 GMT
References: <2285@basser.oz>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 22

From article <2285@basser.oz>, by jaa@basser.oz (James Ashton):
" In article <1974@bunyip.cc.uq.OZ> greg@brolga.cc.uq.oz (Gregory R. Lehmann) writes:
" >It seems to me adobe have made a mistake with their fonts. They all
" >have an extremely annoying tendency to run together. The classic
" >example is burn which turns into bum ...
" >... Any other theories?
" 
" The main reason is that PostScript does no kerning. ...
" A final note for the pedants lurking in
" netland:  it's not really PostScript that is at fault here, only its
" font dictionaries and associated machinery.  It would be quite possible
" to implement kerning in PostScript with sufficient printer resources.

The .afm files for Adobe fonts have kerning information which would be
made use of, for example, by TeX, by incorporating it into TeX's .tfm
files.  But kerns are ordinarily negative spaces, (they are all negative
for Times-Roman.afm), and of course using negative kerns is not going to
keep the letters from running together.  You could add a bunch of
positive kerns, I suppose, if you're using TeX.  Or how about turning
down the darkness control on your printer?

			Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu