Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!ucla-cs!wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu From: wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu (Rich Wales) Newsgroups: comp.fonts Subject: How to define kerning for a soft font? Message-ID: <38743@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> Date: 7 Sep 90 06:38:13 GMT Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU Organization: UCLA CS Department, Los Angeles Lines: 29 I would like to figure out a way to generate kerning information auto- matically for a soft font (e.g., an HP LJ IIP font). There's a good chance I'll be starting to use WordPerfect 5.1 later this year. WordPerfect (unlike Microsoft Word, my current word processing program of choice) has facilities to support kerning. Since HP soft font files themselves have no provision for kerning info, "free" fonts (e.g., from the Waterloo archive) tend not to come with any kerning tables. What I'm currently thinking of is a program which would construct the character shapes for a given font in memory -- then take each pair of symbols and try to move them closer together (up to some minimum dis- tance, measured in any direction). I suspect the above idea is too simplistic, though, and I'd like to hear any comments, pointers to authoritative works on the subject, etc. I've read what little Knuth has to say about kerning in the Metafont book. On the one hand, he doesn't say very much about how to decide what amount of kerning is appropriate and where. On the other hand, given Knuth's background in typesetting, the fact that he doesn't say much about it in his book suggests that maybe there =is= no real theory. -- -- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department 3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, CA 90024-1596 // +1 (213) 825-5683 "You must not drink the tea. It is deadly to humans."