Re: "Kerning?"

["..." adpf@xxxxxxxx]

≪ In Holland the old drukkersknecht (journeymen printers) called cast type
 koudrukschrift, "cold letters". By cold, I mean foundry type. I was a
 summer intern at Mouton & Co in Den Haag almost forty years ago, where some
 books were still being hand printed in a conscious claim to the Haarlem
 tradition of the punch, the matrix, and the mould. [...] ≫ --Robert
Holmgren

I thought this (and the big chunk I just snipped since it's recent)
so interesting I forwarded it to Dick Weltz for comment. His reply
follows my sig.

==================================== adpFisher  nyc

Everything sounds correctly explained to me, except for the last section:

≫Anyway, chars like WA or ligatures like ffi were always cast as whole
multicharacter units--never kerned--a genuine vestige the woodblock
tradition from which movable type developed. ≪

In foundry type (usually only large sizes) combinations such as WA and To,
YA, Ye, etc., were kerned by physically cutting away part of their metal
bodies with a circular saw so that the two adjacent pieces of type would
interlock and bring the printing surfaces of the letters closer.

The important thing, however, is that kerning refers to the removal of space
between letters (especially where there needs to be an overhang as with some
italic f's); whereas letterspacing is definitely the opposite -- the addition
of space between letters to the space which is "normal" in the particular
font.

Hope this helps.

-- Dick Weltz, Spectrum Multilanguage Communications, NYC
        North America's Leading Translators
         And Foreign Language Typesetters
   e-mail: 
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