Re: Xywrite antiques -Reply

[Bill Troop bill@xxxxxxxx]

> Is this the same as kerning, Bill?
Only if the word kerning is misused as it not too infrequently is. Kerning
should refer only to certain specific letter combinations (for instance To)
where the space between the letters is reduced (or in certain rare
instances expanded) for optical reasons.
Can I define it better? I'm not sure. Here's Walter Tracy's definition in
'Letters of Credit': "... the 'kerning routine' ... allows a letter to
intrude into the 'air space' of another when the circumstances make it
desirable. The closing up of T, V, W and Y with non-ascender lower case
letters [such as a, e, i, n, o, u, p etc.] is a familiar example.... Too
often the program reduces the space between the letters by too much,
diminishing the identity of the letters and causing a clot of congestion."
There is also positive kerning: for instance, in the case of a font like
Garamond or Baskerville, where the f overhangs beyond its bar, a
combination like f! will have a positive kern to prevent the two letters
from colliding.
All typesetting programs and most contemporary word processors (such as
WordPerfect and Word) allow automatic kerning. Most Postscript fonts have
at least 500 kern pairs. XyWrite never allowed automatic kerning, but you
could do manual kerning with specific printer commands of course -- and you
certainly would not see the effect on screen.
Future font formats, like the dubious OpenType, may allow kerning of more
than two pairs, which I think is sometimes called range kerning. But I may
have that term wrong.
People sometimes use "kerning" to mean tracking. Hence the confusion, which
can be avoided by sticking to the right usages.
Robert Bringhurst has a well-known book -- The Elements of Typographic
Style -- which explains every last typographical refinement entertainingly.