![]() ![]() QuarkXPress uses units of 1/200 of an em, and Adobe InDesign uses 1/1000 of an em. In modern digital page-layout software, high-end applications all use relative measurements proportional to the size of the type. In the days of machine-implemented lead typesetting, such as Linotype machines and the Monotype System, letter spacing had to be uniform. Digital type does allow for negative sidebearings, which were uncommon in metal type because of the difficulty in cutting a " kern". Most systems have the default letter spacing at zero and instead use the character widths and kerning information built into the font itself.Īlthough digital type sets tighter than metal type on average, this results primarily from the availability of kerning. Word processing and desktop publishing programs for personal computers, such as LibreOffice Writer, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, WordPerfect, QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop, use differing methods of adjusting letter spacing. ![]() Printer and type designer Frederic Goudy stated that "Men who would letterspace blackletter would steal sheep." Goudy's statement inspired the title of the book Stop Stealing Sheep, an introduction to typography. It was also used for very short phrases set in capital letters or small caps to prevent the phrases from appearing too black compared to the rest of the page. Despite the cost, letter spacing was used in print advertising and book publishing. Letter spacing required hand insertion of copper (a half-point), brass (one point), and printer's "lead" (two points) spaces between individual pieces of type or between matrices. Some publishers and typesetters avoided letter spacing because it was costly in materials and labor. ![]() In the days of hot metal typesetting, letter spacing required adding horizontal space between letters of words set in metal type in increments of a minimum of a half-point. Tracking can similarly go in either direction, but with metal type, one could make groups of letters only farther apart (positive spacing). Digital kerning could go in either direction. A kern could therefore only bring letters closer together (negative spacing). Historically, with metal type, a kern meant having a letter stick out beyond the metal slug to which it was attached, or having part of the body of the slug cut off to allow letters to overlap. Letter spacing is distinct from kerning, which adjusts the spacing of particular pairs of adjacent characters such as "7." which would appear to be badly spaced if left unadjusted. If you think that only fontspec should change: I'm quite willing to try to contact Will.In typography, letter spacing, character spacing or tracking is an optically consistent adjustment to the space between letters to change the visual density of a line or block of text. So every solution which corrects the problem on the fontspec level (either some change in luaotfload or only in fontspec) is fine for me. I agree that users interface through a package but imho in the case of letterspacing/tracking this package is generally fontspec and not microtype as letterspacing for xelatex isn't offered by microtype amd quite a lot lualatex users started with xelatex (or use both).Īlso from the point of a package writer I currently would prefer to use fontspec too to avoid to many "iflualatex - ifxelatex"-clauses (this could change if microtype expands its letterspacing to xelatex)- but naturally Letterspace must give a consistent result. The user wanted to switch to lualatex and didn't understand why all all the headings and other texts broke. I stumbled over the problem while debugging a document which used a class written originally for xelatex and which used the fontspec option "Letterspace" in various places. ![]()
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