Talk:Kerning

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Hmm, am I correct in saying that "correct" kerning roughly corresponds to the axiom "same area inside a letter as outside it" or similar? If so, we should say so. -- Finlay McWalter 19:38, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The etymology given on this page broadly agrees with the OED's etymology, but in many typography books "kern" is supposed to be derived from the way that letters are packed together like kernels of corn. Should the Wikipidea page mention this (common but apparently incorrect?) etymology? --Wiml 04:26, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Figure?

The last sentence in the "Examples of Kerning" section refers to a figure on the page. There is no figure on the page. Is the figure coming back, or should this reference be removed?

[edit] Kerning in wordprocessors

"However, many word processors, such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org do not enable kerning by default."

OpenOffice 2.0 has pair kerning enabled by default. It would suprise me if older versions and Word don't? —Ruud 23:21, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft Word 2003 for Windows XP has the kerning feature as described by the article but it is not enabled by default. —ryker 01:08, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hog image

I've removed the "Hog" image which User:Stevage added. He said it was an "extreme" example, but much of what made it look so "extreme" was the fact that the letters were italicized. Iticicized letters overlap even without any kerning - because the invisible "boxes" that they're contained within in are forward leaning paralelagrams instead of rectangles, whereas kerning involves more of an irregular interlocking between letters of different shapes and sizes so that they fit well together. The text did look like it was kerned somewhat (assuming it's a typeface and not just hand-drawn letters), but I'd say about 75% of the overlap is do to italicization and not kerning. In the future, images and discussion of kerning italicized letters might be a good idea, but the lead image should be non-italicized to avoid undue obfuscation.

Also, who ever made the image that's currently the lead (the "AV" and "Wa" examples"), I think it would be a good idea for them to modify it so that each example has at least three letters. With only two letters present, it's a lot more difficult to see the difference between kerning and tracking. Helvetica 05:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

What exactly does this image represent, with the heavy overlap between one the tails of one letter and the preceding letter etc? The italic isn't solely responsible for that...

Ok. For the lead image, can I suggest making a much simpler, more symbolic image, rather than one that attempts to explain the entire article in a picture? Seriously, just make an image with two letters - the absolute minimum, so that it "represents" kerning. Then use other images later in the article to really explain the concept. Stevage 06:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Stevage - I hate to seem all contrary, but I disagree with your proposal and here's why... It's pretty easy for people to understand that tracking and kerning both involve changing the distance between letters. We probably don't even need a picture to show that. What the pictures need to show is more specifically what tracking and kerning are and how they differ from eachother. Now if there are only two letters in a document - say an A and a T - then adjusting the tracking and adjusting the kerning will have exactly the same effect. There's only a difference when a third letter is added - so that say instead of AT you now have ATE. With ATE, when you make the kerning tighter, the A and the T get closer to eachother but the distance between the T and the E remains the same. Whereas with tracking adjustments, the distances between all three of the letters would increase or decrease. So to show that kerning has taken place, we must show it in context with at least a third letter where the distance doesn't change. People need to be able to see that the distance between two (or more) of the characters has changed relative to the distance between some of the other characters, which has remained the same. And it's also invaluable to show this side by side with tracking adjustments of the same word so that there's a clear visual comparison between the two. I'd be happy to modify my illustration if you think there's a way it could be more clear, but I feel that if any of these key components are removed then this will obfuscate things and make it less helpful for the readers. Helvetica 14:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

PS - in response to your new caption for the hog image - I never said that those letters weren't kerned - I said they probably were (assuming that it's actually a typeface and not hand-drawn). What I did say was that 1. Italicized letters overlap even if they're not kerned, and 2. Using an image with italicized text adds another variable to the equation - thus causing undue obfuscation and making it a poor choice of an image for introducing the concept to the readers. I thought I had explained that earlier, but I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. Helvetica 15:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which WAR is better?

Note that I am not a font expert, but the auto-kerned version of "WAR" in the example image looks better to me. The space between the W and A does not match with the space between the A and R in the manually kerned version. The longer I look at the auto kerned version, the more I find that something inbetween would be good. The auto-kerned version does not look perfectly "connected" whereas the manually kerned version is a bit "inhomogenous". (What are the technical terms for these?) Any comments from the experts?

I definitely wouldn't consider myself an "expert" on typography by any means, but I did create the image - along with several others on here when I was bored and playing around with some graphic design software and some new fonts I downloaded. If you look at the image at full resolution and, you can see that the W and the A (at the closest point) are actually farther apart than the A and the R in the manual version. Though I see how it could appear that they're closer together - due to the heavy degree of overlap. They maybe should be a bit farther apart still, but not as far apart as the auto-kerned version. Helvetica 05:24, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] diacritics

A word on kerning and diacritics? Do fonts commonly define kerning pairs of which the second member is a diacritic? Such as defining different (negative) spacing for m + combining macron (m̄) vs. a + combining macron (ā)? which fonts have that? dab (ᛏ) 13:05, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

These aren’t kerning, and aren’t implemented as kerning either. In a TTF/OpenType font I’ve been editing in FontForge, instead, the the combining character and the base character both have an ‘anchor’, and the anchor points are matched up when combined. So I accidentally once put anchor 1 where anchor 0 should’ve been and vice versa, and had a letter that had the accents that were meant to go above the letter beneath (and vice versa).

But also, if the combination of combining character and the base character already have a precomposed pair (as with ā), then I’ve found that XeLaTeX and I assume other ICU-based software like OpenOffice.org use the precombined character regardless of whether that’s what was encoded in the document.

—Felix the Cassowary 15:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the previous poster misunderstood the question. Anyway, yes, most professionally produced fonts will include kernpairs that feature the diacritic versions of the base characters - with the same or different kerning value depending on the design of the font and the features of the pair. In the case of OpenType fonts using attached accents, or class-based kerning the situation is different, but much more flexible. Dpmarshall 17:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Two-dimensional" spaces

In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of letters all have similar area. Why "two-dimensional"? What other dimensionality of blank space might be appropriate here? 86.137.107.36 21:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

It does seem like there should be a better way of saying it, but I'd say the instinct at that point is to think purely in terms of the left-right distance between the characters (one-dimensional), instead of the actual total area of the space (which I think is the intended point). Either way, it could stand some cleanup from a better typographer than I. --Rindis 16:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kerneling vs. Kerning

The opening paragraph states, "The word kerneling derives from..." However, is this a typo which should actually read, "The word kerning derives from..." ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by OnlineCop (talk • contribs) 14:41, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Point of disagreement

However, it is rarely a sufficient alternative for manual kerning, as some characters may appear to an algorithmic comparison to be spaced very closely together, but to a human reader might appear to be spaced too far apart; especially when the only part of a glyph that is 'too close' is a diacritic sign.

This may have been true 15 years ago, but my personal experience in the field is that kerning these days is not manual. It's pair-specific and font-specific so that it always looks just right. In the occasional case where something doesn't look quite right there may be some "fudging" of the result, but that's usually when we're trying to make something fit into a space where it wouldn't normally; or where we're trying to spread things up to reduce unused space in a particular line or column. For the most part, the programmatic kerning does exactly what we want it to do - have a nice, tight appearance, and take up less space. 204.152.119.46 14:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)