Kerning

[vv-monsalve]

Please give kerning an overall revision and ensure the most common cases are covered. E.g. Yo Po LY LT among others

[vv-monsalve]

Playwrite Austria

[vv-monsalve]

@josescaglione, the following are the main findings after reviewing the basic kerning pairs for the 20 Countries of the Batch 1 to be published.

Please review the following:

• “ and some capital letters e.g. V, T
• ¿ and some capital letters e.g. W, U, H, T
• LT in print Capitals
• space and some capitals like J K
• ‘ and lowercase letters, e.g. a
• punctuation and double quotes. E.g. . and ”
• lowercase letters and apostrophe. E.g. o’ n’ m’
• Capital letters like T, W, V, Y with lowercase letters like o, y

You can see all the Batch-1 fonts images here:
Playwrite-Batch1-kerning-rev-cc1f569-mid-res-jpg.zip . Find below som examples

Playwrite Indonesia

Playwrite Mexico

Playwrite Vietnam

[josescaglione]

NOTE ABOUT KERNING

This font contains a very large number of alternate shapes for each letter. As a result, it was decided to build compound glyphs on the fly. The process was very successful as it maintained the amount of characters manageable but a downside of this decision is the inability of adding kerning exceptions, at least in the current stage of development.

Kerning pairs were added in such a way that they avoid clashing of certain accented characters. Example below:

[vv-monsalve]

Closing this issue with the above note.

[vv-monsalve]

When the latest fonts on the lang-build at commit bf2de62 are compared with the previous ones at commit cc1f569, there are no visible kern changes.

[vv-monsalve]

I'll collect the reports we receive here so they can be revised on further font versions.

Playwrite PL PR

[josescaglione]

Kerning "Ty"

Was able to check and correct all models except those that use y.cnt and a non connecting T. In those cases the pair is unnecessary:
AR BR CA CO DE_GRUND HR HR_LIJEVA SK TZ US_MOD

[josescaglione]

• Kerning "@n"

added positive kerning between at and .cnt glyphs

Checked all models. This changes affects:
AR AU_QLD AU_VIC BE_VLG BE_WAL BR CA CL CO CU CZ DE_LA DE_SAS ES ES_DECO FR_TRAD ID IN IT_TRAD MX NL PE PL PT RO SK TZ US_MOD US_TRAD

[josescaglione]

• kerning pairs ".r" ".e"

Added positive kerning between period and r.ful and e.ful to avoid a collision. Checked ALL models. This affects all pairs with an entry stroke on baseline grouped in e.ful and r.ful

[josescaglione]

• Fix kerning C- Glyphs with entry stroke on baseline

Added positive kerning to pairs with r.ful and e.ful and related groups.
This issue affects a few models that contain print capitals in combination with full cursive lower cases. For example ES, IN and ZA

[vv-monsalve]

Kerning "Ty"

Was able to check and correct all models except those that use y.cnt and a non connecting T. In those cases the pair is unnecessary: AR BR CA CO DE_GRUND HR HR_LIJEVA SK TZ US_MOD

Ty kerning looks unmodified on fonts in Fixes branch at commit 3608fc Automated rebuild

[vv-monsalve]

Kerning "@n"
added positive kerning between at and .cnt glyphs
Checked all models. This changes affects: AR AU_QLD AU_VIC BE_VLG BE_WAL BR CA CL CO CU CZ DE_LA DE_SAS ES ES_DECO FR_TRAD ID IN IT_TRAD MX NL PE PL PT RO SK TZ US_MOD US_TRAD

Confirmed it is working on fonts in Fixes branch at commit 3608fc Automated rebuild

[vv-monsalve]

kerning pairs ".r" ".e"
Added positive kerning between period and r.ful and e.ful to avoid a collision. Checked ALL models. This affects all pairs with an entry stroke on baseline grouped in e.ful and r.ful

Confirmed it is working on fonts in Fixes branch at commit 3608fc Automated rebuild

[vv-monsalve]

Fix kerning C- Glyphs with entry stroke on baseline
Added positive kerning to pairs with r.ful and e.ful and related groups. This issue affects a few models that contain print capitals in combination with full cursive lower cases. For example ES, IN and ZA

Confirmed it is working on fonts in Fixes branch at commit 3608fc Automated rebuild

[vv-monsalve]

@josescaglione I've finished the revision on the fixes branch. There are no font Fails reported, and the diffing images look good :)

The kerning issue reported above would remain the only pending issue before merging the fixes branch into the main and continuing with the font upgrade.

[vv-monsalve]

@josescaglione The above kerning case is solved in the fonts at commit 036752

Now, giving kerning a general overview, the following cases still need attention.

Touching or nearly touching between ‘of’ “of” of? of* of?

Visible in the followin fonts

• AU NSW
• AU QLD
• AU SA
• AU TAS
• DE Grund
• DK Uloopet
• FR Moderne
• GB S
• IS
• NO
• NZ
• US Modern

---

Too distant ’A

Visible in the followin fonts

• DE SAS
• ES
• FR Moderne
• FR Trad

---

Too distant ”A and d’œ

Visible in the followin fonts

• FR Trad
• HU
• ID
• NG Modern
• PL
• PT
• VN

[vv-monsalve]

@josescaglione We have decided to keep the current fonts as they are to proceed with producing the prioritized guide variants. We will leave this issue open so that the bove reported cases can be reconsidered for a different font version in the future.

Please merge the fixes branch into main.

cc @chrissimpkins

[emmamarichal]

Hello @josescaglione! Hope you're doing well!
cc @vv-monsalve

I'm reviewing the first PR of the Playwrite upgrade, all looks good, thank you :) google/fonts#8826

I just saw something I wasn't sure about, but it's probably intentional! It's about the spacing of the “x”, which seems to be slightly different between masters. Could you confirm that this is ok for you, then I'll merge the PR :)

Screen.Recording.2025-01-16.at.10.48.52.mov