Text Formatting ⇒ Vintage kerning

[Johannes_B]

Your pdf looks a bit like a badly printed penguin-book?

Do you have examples/scans of what you are trying to reproduce? Which year are they from?

[Laurentius]

Take this ex. from the Loeb Classical Library, 1914.

What do you not like; the interword spacing?

loeb.jpg (1.6 MiB) Viewed 5998 times

[Laurentius]

Anthoer ex. is De Vinne:

http://ulrik.uio.no:4107/De%20Vinne.pdf

[Johannes_B]

Can you upload the pdf with from before with the original font? btw, have you checked if you are allowed to change it?

Some of the letters, especially y have the tail below an adjacent letter. Is this the result of your doing?

[Laurentius]

Sure. Not sure what you mean. I haven't checked. But is altering the kerning considered altering the font?

[Johannes_B]

Have you been changing the otf?

To be honest, ianal (i am not a lawyer) but you should check before getting in some kind of trouble.


I don't have the very best eye with regards of typography. Making both pdfs full screen, closing my eyes, shuffling the pdfs, i still can spot which one is the one with bad kerning. It just looks odd.



The first image you posted today looks a bit awful. With time in practical use, certain individual letters get cracks and stuff. That makes the output a bit crunchy.


May i ask, what exactly your goal is? I cannot really help you in achieving it, but i am interested.

You might also be interested in Typesetting before TeX and Computers

[Laurentius]

By the first image, do you mean the one from Loeb, 1914? Do you think there is something wrong with the kerning there too?

What I want is something that (as far as kerning is concerned) might have been hand-set and looks hand-set.

[Johannes_B]

Yes, i meant Loeb 1914.

Well, hand set is a thing. If you are really into your job and want to get the best output for you clients, you adjust every little bit by hand.

If you are a bit cheaper, do the default stuff. I.e. no adjustments, use it out of the box.

The scratched types visible in Loeb, 1914 seem to be a prrof of the second part.

But please, this is just my personal opinion.


Have you read about the Gutenberg bible? Gutenberg had an incredible amount of letters including kerning pairs. That was really hand-made stuff.