Another apostrophe problem

[DavidCrowe]

Using: Arbortext Editor 6.0, Windows 7

There is a “known issue” with the Minion Pro font (and other Adobe fonts), in that the apostrophe, in certain combinations, falls too close to the following letter. These combinations include words like l’école, j’avais (we work in French and English), where the apostrophe is almost above the following letter, to the extent almost of nudging the accent, where there is one. Searching on the Web for kerning + apostrophe produces numerous hits and suggestions for solutions in different contexts.

In InDesign, using “optical” kerning rather than “metrical” produces better (and acceptable) results. Arbortext seems only to offer the “metrical” option.

Does anyone know

• whether it’s possible to customise individual kerning pairs in Arbortext?


• whether it’s possible to deactivate kerning on a smaller scale than “per-document” basis?

Or has anyone already come across this and found a work-around?

[bibach]

What type of style sheet are you using to create print/PDF output? If it's
Styler, which backend (FOSI or APP)?

-Brandon 🙂

[DavidCrowe]

It’s a FOSI, called directly from Arbortext Editor (not Styler).

David

[ebenton]

Arbortext uses .tfm files for font metrics information to determine the dimensions of the printed characters. I don’t know if such a file exists anywhere for the Minion Pro font nor if it would solve your problem, but if you know of a workable font metrics file for the Minion Pro font, you could try adding a TFM or AFM file to your custom\fonts folder. Search for “tfm” in Help and see if anything shows up that might help you.

[DavidCrowe]

That certainly seems to be an avenue worth exploring. Thanks, Ed.

As far as I can see:

· Arbortext still uses .TFM files.

· Under Windows it creates them automatically from installed fonts.

· Tools supplied with Arbortext allow you to convert between .TFM binaries and the human-readable equivalent .PL.

· So all I need to do is convert the .TFM to .PL, edit the .PL to kern the apostrophe to my satisfaction, and convert back to .TFM.

That’s the theory, at least.

I am away for a couple of days, but hope to try it out next week.

David

[ebenton]

Yes, We have done something similar to this to eliminate problems with ligatures (fi and fl) in Arial and Times New Roman fonts caused by Windows 7 fonts code points compared to old Win XP fonts, which are still used by Arbortext 6.0 M040.

[DavidCrowe]

For the record, it worked.

It’s not necessary to alter the .TFM files in \Program Files\PTC\Arbortext Editor\fonts\; edited copies of the same files placed in the ..\User\custom\fonts\ directory take precedence. This approach, of course, makes upgrades simpler and safer.

The rest is just trial and error.

Thanks again, Ed, for your advice.

David

[ebenton]

Thank you for posting that you solved your problem.
Sometimes solutions are found but never announced to the community.
It’s nice to know when an Adepters posting actually helps someone.