Tri-state kerning in Firefox involving /space (bug or feature?)
Adam Jagosz
Posts: 689
I have a problem with kerning in Firefox. I decided to give the letters with vertical caron negative kerning against round x-height letters (which works as expected), and then I thought it would be nice to include a slight negative kerning against space. The thing is—when I rely on browser defaults for font-feature-settings, Firefox applies the kerning for the first case but ignores the case with space. When I explicitly turn on kerning, space is kerned with the caron letters correctly. Which means the kerning for my font in Firefox can be: on, off, or ‘just a bit off’ 
In Chrome the space is not kerned at all even when kerning is explicitly enabled.
Everything works fine in Word, InDesign, Edge (which doesn't turn kerning on by default, so no tri-state experiments are possible).
I suppose this has to do with space being a multiscript character?

In Chrome the space is not kerned at all even when kerning is explicitly enabled.
Everything works fine in Word, InDesign, Edge (which doesn't turn kerning on by default, so no tri-state experiments are possible).
I suppose this has to do with space being a multiscript character?
0
Comments
-
It might also be because some layout engines treat the space as a character that breaks the text run. I suspect that as a result they simply don’t process the space in OpenType layout, including kerning
(I know for sure that one of Adobe’s layout engines do or at least formerly did this, a subject of some frustration for me.)0 -
That sounds like a bug in Firefox and Chrome. I’m pretty sure their expected behavior is that if the font has any lookups that apply to space, then the optimization that splits words at space should be disabled.
0
Categories
- All Categories
- 46 Introductions
- 3.8K Typeface Design
- 478 Type Design Critiques
- 558 Type Design Software
- 1.1K Type Design Technique & Theory
- 645 Type Business
- 836 Font Technology
- 29 Punchcutting
- 512 Typography
- 119 Type Education
- 318 Type History
- 75 Type Resources
- 110 Lettering and Calligraphy
- 31 Lettering Critiques
- 79 Lettering Technique & Theory
- 538 Announcements
- 87 Events
- 111 Job Postings
- 168 Type Releases
- 171 Miscellaneous News
- 274 About TypeDrawers
- 53 TypeDrawers Announcements
- 119 Suggestions and Bug Reports