What is kerning?

[John McG.]

Under Format/Font, I see a checkbox option to
enable "Kerning for fonts" at a given point size and
above. I couldn't find a description of what this
function does under Help. Does anyone know how this is
used? Thanks much for any help you can provide!

-- John

 

[Stefan Blom]

Context help for the kerning option says:

"Automatically adjusts kerning, or the amount of space between certain
combinations of characters, so that the entire word looks more evenly
spaced. Kerning works only with TrueType or Adobe Type Manager fonts."

 

[DDM]

John, my two cents...

I've heard that kerning is a term used in printing, and that, as Stafan said
in his reply, it refers to the amount of space between certain characters in
combination. It seems that certain characters just don't look right when
standing next to each other. The classic example is "W" and "A," as in WAR.
The two letters overlap so the word looks awkward. Adjusting the kerning
means adjusting the space between the letters so the word looks better on
the page.

IMHO, you probably won't need to worry a lot about kerning about unless you
do a lot of text in large type, such as headlines.

 

[DDM]

I meant "Stefan," not "Stafan." Mea Culpa.

 

[Klaus Linke]

"Kerning works only with TrueType or Adobe Type Manager fonts."

.... which usually means "works for all fonts" (TT, OT, PostScript).
I'd strongly recommend to use kerning. It simply looks better.

Some people say that at (very) small font sizes, you shouldn't use kerning.
That's the reason for the "above" setting.

I have no idea why kerning is not the default. Probably the d*** backwards
compatibility again?

Regards,
Klaus