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1. Re: I need just ONE change in a kerning table...grrrrr
P Spier Jan 11, 2013 10:06 AM (in response to Quindaro)Well that's the way to deal with it if you need custom kerning. It really isn't all that complicated.
But on another note, there should be a Th ligature, and it would be on by default. Perhaps you are objecting to that and should turn off ligatures?
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2. Re: I need just ONE change in a kerning table...grrrrr
Quindaro Jan 11, 2013 10:19 AM (in response to P Spier)Not complicated — just tedious!
But you're right, Peter ... it IS a ligature. I have kerned that thing to -50 and it still doesn't look like it does with Ligatures on.
I am indeed objecting to it ... so now the question is, should I trust my reaction to this, or the type designer?
I guess this is why we do prepub printings!
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3. Re: I need just ONE change in a kerning table...grrrrr
John Mensinger Jan 11, 2013 10:28 AM (in response to Quindaro)In one of my currrent jobs, there's a bunch of legal copy that gets set as small as possible. At sub-6-point sizes, the output often exhibits collisions between certain pairs, and in that sea of tiny, light-legged glyphs, they stand out like ink smudges. I set up a Character Style with nothing in it but a positive tracking value and then use GREP Styles nested in the Paragraph Style to apply it to identified problem pairs. Then I just increase the tracking value in the Character style in small incremements until the pairs open up acceptably. Looks like your problem could be a candidate for this kind of treatment.
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4. Re: I need just ONE change in a kerning table...grrrrr
P Spier Jan 11, 2013 10:53 AM (in response to Quindaro)Shouldn't be tedious at all. Add a GREP style to your paragraph styles. You want to look for Th so enter that in the Apply to field. In the style field click the dropdown and select New Character Style and in the dialog that comes up go to Basic Character Formats, then click the Ligatures checkbox twice to clear it (it should be white when you are done). Save the character style as No Ligatures and you're done. Add the GREP style to each of the paragraph styles that need it. You only need to add it to the base style if you've based one style on another.
The other option is to turn of ligtures entirely, but that's going to probably introduce new collisions in the fi/fl combinations. You can do that in the paragraph styles by going to the Basic Character Formatting section and just unchecking ligatures.
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5. Re: I need just ONE change in a kerning table...grrrrr
Quindaro Jan 11, 2013 11:00 AM (in response to P Spier)Hey thanks to both of you. I had read about kerning and grep (why do we all-cap that?) but it wasn't until now in that I understood exactly what you could do in this instance.
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6. Re: I need just ONE change in a kerning table...grrrrr
MW Design Jan 11, 2013 11:02 AM (in response to Quindaro)All caps because GREP is an acronym like PC, WYSIWYG, etc.
Mike "A slave to convention"
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7. Re: I need just ONE change in a kerning table...grrrrr
P Spier Jan 11, 2013 11:02 AM (in response to Quindaro)GREP is an acronym for General Regular Expression Parser or some such....
Looking at the lowercase ffi combo in Minion pro, if you don't like the Th ligature, you'll probably be just as happy turnin off ligatures altogether, and that doesn't require GREP at all.
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8. Re: I need just ONE change in a kerning table...grrrrr
[Ariel] Jan 12, 2013 11:57 PM (in response to P Spier)Adobe have made a "funny" decision in the their fonts: They have
included the "Th" as part of the basic ligatures, whereas really it
should be part of the "discretionary" ligatures set. It comes from a
different tradition to the standard f-ligatures, and will bother some
readers. It bothers me. It bother the OP.
So I think the OP is quite right in wanting to discard the Th ligature,
but in keeping the other standard ligatures.
I always try to eliminate it. But instead of creating a GREP style for
each of the 38 paragraph styles or so per book, I simply do a search and
replace, creating local overrides:
(1) search for "Th" (case-sensitive)
(2) replace with "no ligatures"
Somebody who knows how to use an open-type font editor (without
destroying the font) could simply change the category of Th within the
font itself to be a discretionary lig., as Adobe should have done in the
first place.
Ariel



