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From: teexdwu@ioe.lon.ac.uk (DOMINIK WUJASTYK)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: "Tightness" of inter-character spacing?
Message-ID: <1991Jan8.141835.14138@ioe.lon.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Jan 91 14:18:35 GMT
References: <30@borg.cs.unc.edu> <1991Jan7.165852.23805@csrd.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: teexdwu@ioe.lon.ac.uk (DOMINIK WUJASTYK)
Organization: Institute of Education University of London
Lines: 22

In article <1991Jan7.165852.23805@csrd.uiuc.edu> eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout) writes:
>marshall@marshall.cs.unc.edu (Jonathan Marshall) writes:
>
>>Is there an easy way in TeX to change the tightness of spacing between
>>characters?  The hard way would be something like:
>[...]
>>I realize that certain purists might say that I should just define a
>>new, tighter font.  However, this sort of operation is very common in
>>graphic design, where inter-character tightness is often varied at
>>will.  Also, it would be infeasible to design a new font for every
>>possible degree of tightness.

You don't have do do a whole font.  Just run TFtoPL on the TFM, and
change the spacing there (the CHARWD parameters).  Then reassemble
the TFM using PLtoTF, and away you go.  A more elegant method would
be to call make the new file a VPL file, and use VPtoVF to make yourself
a virtual font.  Then you can leave the original font TFM intact, and
give the new font a new name.  If your DVI translator doesn't support
VF files, complain loudly to your supplier: it's a year since the VF spec.
was announced.

Dominik