[XeTeX] TTF Kerning

[Jonathan Kew]

On 30 Jul 2006, at 1:53 pm, jeffdod at netzero.net wrote:

> Is there any plan to ever support kerning for TrueType fonts (that
> is, TTF fonts that are not of the OpenType format)?
>
> I have many TTF fonts that include kerning pairs, but as per the
> fontspec documentation, XeTeX only observes kerning for OpenType
> fonts. It sure would be nice if XeTeX someday supported kerning for
> both font types...

I *think* (but am not 100% sure and haven't tested) that on Mac OS X,  
the old-style kern table would be supported when the fonts are used  
through the ATSUI layout engine. But that's no help to you, as you're  
running on Windows, IIRC, where only the ICU engine is available.

>
> I don't know what is involved in supporting this, so I may be asking
> the impossible. Sure would be nice though...

It's not impossible, but the support would need to be added at a  
fairly low level in the ICU layout engine, which is a non-trivial  
piece of hacking....

It would also be nice to support kerning for old Type 1 fonts with  
AFM files, which would involve similar modifications. I'd be happy to  
accept a patch that adds this.... :)

JK