On Thu, 2010-02-04 at 04:31 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > On 2/4/10, William F. Maddock wrote: > > >> Give me a definition and I might be inclined to implement that. > > > > Briefly returning from lurk mode... > > > > This conversation started me thinking (which can, of course, be a > > dangerous thing): > > > > What if we could, well, revamp the entire concept of character spacing > > in such a way that kerning would no longer be needed? Instead of basing > > any given character's space on the widest part of that character's > > glyph, why not make it relativistic? In other words, the character > > spacing would be defined as the closest approach between any two glyphs. > > Take the word "You", for example. Instead of defining the right edge of > > the "Y" glyph as the furthest right visible portion of the glyph, you > > would instead be defining the closest approach of the visible portions > > of the "Y" glyph to the visible portions of the "o" glyph, and you would > > do the same for the "o" and the "u" and any other pair of glyphs. > > Instead of having an almost Ptolemaic system like we have now, with the > > special settings for certain pairs of glyphs being akin to the epicycles > > of Ptolemy's view of the heavenly bodies, we would simply have a single > > setting that would say, "This is how close I want any two characters of > > this face to approach each other (other than the space characters, of > > course)." > > > > Am I completely crazy, or does this idea have merit? > > http://typophile.com/node/66574 > http://code.google.com/p/sortsmill/
Well, I'll be... Not first, but certainly not alone. :-) Thank you, Alexandre.
