FontForge -- An Outline Font Editor

Jakub Steiner <jimmac@...> skribis:
> Howdy,
> I'd like to apoligise if the question has been answered. I couldn't
> figure out how to search within the ML archives. I have started with
> kerning a few pairs but then read up on the awesome class kerning.
> This is so much saner than the pair based kerning tables, but I found
> out it doesn't seem to work for me outside of FontForge. Well I only
> tested with Inkscape as that's the app that matters for me.

Unless the Inkscape version is old it should work, I believe. It works
on my system (Inkscape 0.46 on Gentoo Linux).

> Is there something I may have overlooked? Have people succesfully used
> kerning by class with OTF? Is there a way to automatically generate
> the old style pair table out of the class table? Creating all the
> pairs manually seems to be insane.

This can be done by selecting options when you generate the font. Also
you could generate an AFM file and read it back in.

Barry Schwartz wrote:
> Jakub Steiner <jimmac@...> skribis:
>   
>> Howdy,
>> I'd like to apoligise if the question has been answered. I couldn't
>> figure out how to search within the ML archives. I have started with
>> kerning a few pairs but then read up on the awesome class kerning.
>> This is so much saner than the pair based kerning tables, but I found
>> out it doesn't seem to work for me outside of FontForge. Well I only
>> tested with Inkscape as that's the app that matters for me.
>>     
>
> Unless the Inkscape version is old it should work, I believe. It works
> on my system (Inkscape 0.46 on Gentoo Linux).
>
>   
It also works in Inkscape 0.46 running on Ubuntu 9.04. Inkscape uses 
Pango to render text; I don't know how up-to-date the Pango libraries 
have to be to get GPOS-based kerning. There were some issues with 
Inkscape running under OS X, but these seem to be fixed now.

Thanks for the answer guys. Good to know it's me :)

The problem now is I can't find what's wrong. Can you see anything
obvious in the file?

https://forgesvn1.novell.com/svn/opensuse-art/trunk/00assets/fonts/FifthLeg.sfd
https://forgesvn1.novell.com/svn/opensuse-art/trunk/00assets/fonts/FifthLeg-Bold.sfd

thank you!

-- 
Jakub Steiner <jimmac@...>
http://jimmac.musichall.cz

Jakub Steiner wrote:
> Thanks for the answer guys. Good to know it's me :)
>
> The problem now is I can't find what's wrong. Can you see anything
> obvious in the file?
>
> https://forgesvn1.novell.com/svn/opensuse-art/trunk/00assets/fonts/FifthLeg.sfd
> https://forgesvn1.novell.com/svn/opensuse-art/trunk/00assets/fonts/FifthLeg-Bold.sfd
>
> thank you!
>
>   

No, it looks okay to me. And when I generate an .otf font and install 
it, my copy of Inkscape displays the kerning you've defined correctly.

Jakub, I'm going to send you (off list) a font to test with some text to 
paste into Inkscape. See if it works right for you.

Peter

Turns out it was really me forgetting a checkbox in the 'generate
font' options. Without the 'Opentype' option selected, neither my GPOS
nor GSUB tables were actually exported.

Again I really appreciate the amount of good advice on this list. I am
really impressed by the FF user community. Thanks guys!

--
Jakub Steiner <jimmac@...>
http://jimmac.musichall.cz

Jakub Steiner wrote:
> Turns out it was really me forgetting a checkbox in the 'generate
> font' options. Without the 'Opentype' option selected, neither my GPOS
> nor GSUB tables were actually exported.
>
>   

Ha! A few weeks ago I pestered two lists for several days precisely 
because I forgot to check a box in FF (a different one).

Peter