I've often completed all the spacing and kerning on a typeface and when I get all done realize there are far too many kern pairs for a specific character in the font.
That conclusion leads me to believe that I have poorly spaced the right sidebearing of the character and I often wish for some tool I could use to merge spacing and kerning data to yield the least amount of kerns.
I call this concept "Flatten Kerning" similar to flattening an image in Photoshop. However I do not have the technical ability to create such an application but feel it could be very simple if I knew how to implement something that would work with a .met file from FOG.
Here's my real life example to illustratrate the need for this tool:
Let's say I've exported the spacing and kerning file from FOG and this is all the data it tells me about my 'o' character.
o a -65 kern
o b -25 kern
o c -5 kern
o d -45 kern
o e -5 kern
o f -10 kern
o g -5 kern
o h -10 kern
o i -5 kern
o j -50 kern
o k -5 kern
o l -5 kern
o m -5 kern
o n -5 kern
o o -10 kern
o p -25 kern
o q -5 kern
o r -25 kern
o s -15 kern
o t -25 kern
o u -5 kern
o v -65 kern
o w -60 kern
o x -45 kern
o y -15 kern
o z -35 kern
As you can see due to not getting the spacing right, I have a kern pair for almost every lowercase instance.
If I look at my right sidebearing, it's 10 which tells me if I take it to 5 I can kill off 10 kern pairs from the font as well as reduce the kerning for the remaining pairs for my 'o'
o a -60 kern
o b -20 kern
o d -40 kern
o f -5 kern
o h -5 kern
o j -45 kern
o o -5 kern
o p -20 kern
o r -20 kern
o s -10 kern
o t -20 kern
o v -60 kern
o w -55 kern
o x -40 kern
o y -10 kern
o z -30 kern
I could do this process manually but I think it could be automated with some sort of program.
Some problems come to mind . . .
First, the metrics file only contains the width of the character which means it'd be difficult to determine the sidebearings of the character.
Second, what to make of left sidebearings since the case may be such that the left sidebearing could be causing the creation of a ton of kerning pairs when all it needs to be is fixed.
I am excited to hear your thoughts and comments about this and please don't tell me FL already does this, I'm looking for a solution that will work for FOG.
Stuart :D
