Text Spacing (Kerning/Tracking) Settings Lost

[mvpdigital]

I put in a ticket last night, and received a call for more info this morning. I sent it, and am now awaiting their reply.

Thanks for giving it a shot.

[steve.ledger]

You're very welcome

[mvpdigital]

I agree - you need Xara support on this one...

So just to confirm, when you open my latest attachment (from my win98 machine), the text is back to default (not tracked), correct?

[steve.ledger]

Correct..

[mvpdigital]

I've spent the last few days going back and forth from my win98 machine to my XP machine with test files on a SD card. The files (utilizing the Scriptina font which I have on both systems) display properly in Xara on the win98 machine, but not on XP.

You can download the free font here to test for yourself:
http://www.dafont.com/scriptina.font

In doing my tests, I've made a discovery. On my win98 machine, I created a file which has no added text attributes (kerning/tracking/bold etc.), just the Automatiic Kerning (AWAW) button set to active. As you can see from the gif (98originalAuto.gif), win98 Xara takes care of the kerning automatically.

I then disabled Automatic Kerning (AWAW), and you can see the result (98originalNOauto.gif).

I saved these two xar files from win98 Xara to the SD card and brought them into winXP Xara. As you will see, the Automatic Kerning (AWAW) is not working on the Scriptina font, as it did in win98 Xara.

I've sent this info to Xara Support and am awaiting their reply. I am assuming that they are testing this issue on a win98 and winXP system as I am. One quick test as I have described will show them the issue is quite obvious.

I am hopeful that they can now offer some assistant in fixing this error, so I can reassure my clients that Xara is THE program for their design work, and the hundreds of files I have created for them are not garbage.

Does anyone know if it's possible to adjust the MASTER kerning of specific characters within a font. I'm really getting desperate here.

[steve.ledger]

I am hopeful that they can now offer some assistant in fixing this error, so I can reassure my clients that Xara is THE program for their design work, and the hundreds of files I have created for them are not garbage.

Assuming the files to have previously created for your clients are finished work, I would convert all the text to editable shapes before sharing with the clients or printers. Obviously for your own archives you can have both.
This would be a partial solution for those files moved from Win98 to WindowsXP and beyond, particularly if those fonts are not available on your clients or printer computers.

[mvpdigital]

I realize that I could do that. But I prefer to keep my text liquid (as text), so that when changes are required, I can quickly and easily adjust. In other words, my work with clients is never finished. Time is money.

[steve.ledger]

Fair enough

Just one point, it is not necessary to fully quote preceding posts. Often this leads to uneccessary reading and scrolling for other readers..

[mvpdigital]

Sorry about that. It's force of habit. I am a member of other forums where the threads go in every which direction with multiple posters, and quoting is the only way for readers to know who/what you are referring to.

I don't want you to think I was disregarding and of your advice. I think it's excellent, it just doesn't work for me in this particular situation. And besides, if it's a bug, I'd think Xara would want to fix it.

Thanks for all your help.

[steve.ledger]

That's quite alright, it was *immediately* preceding posts I was referring to. Please feel free to quote any relevant parts of any earlier, preceding posts