Text Spacing (Kerning/Tracking) Settings Lost

[mvpdigital]

I installed David's Scriptina font. It is not perfect, but it is much closer. There is a bit too thick a curl on the "b" right off the top.

I opened my two files from post 45, "98origialAuto.xar" and "98originalAuto.gif", and superimposed them. I applied transparency to the gif (on top) and adjusted it back and forth, and you can see the Scriptina fix is darn near right on. Just a bit too much space between the "g" and "i".

But then I continued to adjust the transparency back and forth and looked at the Arial "Digital" at the top. The kerning between the "t" and "a" is not the same.

The gif is showing Arial as if the Auto Kerning was off. I will have to set up my 98 machine and make sure that it was indeed on for the Arial text in the original file. But if it was, this is a strange happening.

[David O'Neil]

This should be closer

[mvpdigital]

David, your lastest font attempt isn't close... it's exact!

I don't know how I will ever repay you... but I have visited your website, so I just might find a way. I am going to test out your re-working of the Scriptina Font for a while and make sure there aren't any bugs that pop up, but for today I am one happy camper.

Thank you to all who contributed along this journey. If nothing else, I hope others enjoy a beautiful font which hopefully now cooperates with XP and beyond (other user tests would be beneficial of course). To that end, David, you might want to offer this fix to the original designer, or maybe fontists aren't receptive to this kind of tinkering with their work. I'll leave that with you.

I opened my two files from post 32, "win98text.xar" and "win98text.gif", and superimposed them. I applied transparency to the gif (on top) and adjusted it back and forth, and was disappointed at first. It appeared that the new font was TOO squashed, and bolder. I remembered/noticed that the text tracking was at 50ems, so I took that to zero, which of course made things even worse. I returned it to 50ems and removed the BOLD, and presto change-o, it is a perfect match! I had assumed that the BOLD attribute would increase a fonts travel, not reduce it.

Now it looks like all I will have to do to all my imported designs is remove the BOLD attribute and they will be fixed. This is a huge save in work flow time.

Thanks again, everyone!

[David O'Neil]

I am glad it works correctly. To save a little more headache, here is a set corrected to have the same outlines on the glyphs I know I changed. The glyphs affected are '&', '@', some florins, and some accented characters.

[Soquili]

Thanks David!

[mvpdigital]

I am glad it works correctly. To save a little more headache, here is a set corrected to have the same outlines on the glyphs I know I changed. The glyphs affected are '&', '@', some florins, and some accented characters.

Okay, I'm going to show how green I am at this font game... ummm, what are "outlines", "glyphs" and "florins"?

[David O'Neil]

I'm not checking a dictionary, and I am not an expert, so the following may not be exactly correct. As I used the terms, a 'glyph' is an individual character of a font. When designing a font, you design the 'outline' of each individual glyph. If a glyph has interior 'holes' in it (such as the interior hole in 'O'), I am considering that to be part of the outline, even though I don't believe it technically is. I used 'florin' as a word representing a flowery embellishment to a font. I used it for characters in Scriptina like the following, even though I probably shouldn't have. If you are curious to see the changes, you can install the first file I posted, make a 100pt text in Xara of the '@' and other characters I pointed out, convert it to a bitmap, uninstall that font, and install the last of the files and repeat. Then compare the bitmaps. The 'outlines' will be slightly different. (My first effort was quick and dirty, just to see if the font was the problem.)

[mvpdigital]

Thanks David!