Fix vertical metrics adjustment in webfonts

[selfagency]

i love this font and really wanted to use it in a project of mine but unfortunately the baseline seems to be way higher than it ought to be and the letter spacing is far too wide. here are a couple of screencaps that show the baseline shift. that gap beneath the characters shouldn't be there. for reference, karla's baseline is flush with the bottom of the selection.

[nclm]

Hi!

Indeed for the line height, I wonder how we lost that from Karla. Let’s check if there’s a simple option to adjust it in Fontforge. For now, you can change the default leading in your layout software or edit the line-height in your CSS.

As for the letter spacing, the issue is already open (#23), and there’s also a discussion about this on #22. Here also, modifying the tracking or editing letter-spacing is the solution for now.

[selfagency]

@nclm the second image above is what happens when i apply a line height to my type which has a transparent background

[ms-studio]

Interesting! In my view, the generous line height and spacing of Karla / Karmilla are a design decision. When I compare Karmilla v.15 with the original Karla font, the line height and spacing are the same. Here's a screenshot of Karmilla, Karla and Helvetica side by side:

Indeed for some projects, I have been wishing for tighter spacing and line height, but didn't have any problem setting this with CSS or the layout software, as @nclm says.

In what software are you encountering the unwanted overlay seen in the second image?

[selfagency]

@ms-studio i'm using it in a web design with a font-face kit and that extra height is what i'm getting in-browser.

[selfagency]

@nclm my guess how you lost the height is by adding height at the bottom to accommodate special characters, like ç. but that's just a guess b/c i haven't opened it in a font editor.

[jonpinhorn]

Hi guys,

Manuel is right; it was a design decision. Karla Latin was designed as the companion script to Karla Tamil, also available on Google Fonts. The unusual line spacing came about, in part, through experimentation with typesetting Latin and Tamil scripts together as well as attempts to make the design’s textures similar to each other.

Jonny Pinhorn

On 1 Feb 2016, at 20:48, Daniel Sieradski [email protected] wrote:

@nclm https://github.com/nclm my guess how you lost the height is by adding height at the bottom to accommodate special characters, like ç. but that's just a guess b/c i haven't opened it in a font editor.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub #34 (comment).

[selfagency]

the problem with that @jonpinhorn is that for those who want to use karmilla latin as a webfont on latin-only sites, the baseline shift causes typesetting consistency problems, like the offset text above. our publication uses english and spanish and thus i don't need line spacing parity with tamil. is it possible to create a subset for those trying to compliment asian scripts separate from the primary latin set?

[jonpinhorn]

At this moment I would suggest making modifications or a fork to Karmilla. Thanks.

On 1 Feb 2016, at 20:59, Daniel Sieradski [email protected] wrote:

the problem with that @jonpinhorn https://github.com/jonpinhorn is that for those who want to use karla latin as a webfont on latin-only sites, the baseline shift causes typesetting consistency problems, like the offset text above. our publication uses english and spanish and thus i don't need line spacing parity with tamil. is it possible to create a subset for those trying to compliment asian scripts separate from the primary latin set?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub #34 (comment).

[nclm]

If the desktop Karmilla has the same leading than Karla, then something is wrong in our webfonts. Try regenerating the webfonts with http://fontsquirrel.com/tools/webfont-generator with ‘no adjustment’ of vertical metrics (in ‘Expert’). I believe we mistakenly left the ‘auto-adjust’ on for the webfonts.

[selfagency]

that resolved it!

[nclm]

Great!
So that’s something to fix in Karmilla exported webfonts. Let’s use this bug for this.

[nclm]

It should now be fixed!

[selfagency]

👍