[bug #60587] Allow font files to specify kern pairs for characters in different fonts

[Dave]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #60587 (project groff):

I know very little about other typesetting software in general, so I'm not the
best person to answer.

Heirloom troff offers the functionality at the user level (via the .kernpair
request), but its documentation specifically states it doesn't offer a way to
predefine such pairs.

Still, having the macro in user space means the underlying data structures
must be able to store kern pairs for glyphs from different fonts, which seems
like the hard part.  Once those data structures exist, providing a way to
prepopulate them based on data in your font directory (where exactly this data
would live would need to be figured out) seems like the easy(er) part:
conceptually it's no different from running a startup .tmac file containing a
bunch of .kernpair requests.

Then actually generating the data is the other hard part. :)  If, as you
suspect, no one else offers this functionality, cross-font kerning data simply
doesn't exist--which would be my guess as to why Heirloom didn't bother
providing a preloading mechanism.

    _______________________________________________________

Reply to this item at:

  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?60587>

_______________________________________________
  Message sent via Savannah
  https://savannah.gnu.org/