Kern On—Semi Automated Kerning Plugin for Glyphs

Comments

• Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044

  June 18

  Sounds promising. I hope there will be a Windows version (for the sake of diversity).

  2
• Matthijs Herzberg Posts: 116

  June 19

  As it is a glyphs plug-in, I doubt it. Personally, this is a bigger enticement to switch OS than any mac-specific type apps I've seen yet. Is there anything remotely similar for FontLab?
  
  

  0
• Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044

  June 19 edited June 19

  @Matthijs Herzberg It's just that so many people in this world would have to rob a fancy restaurant to be able to switch OS... (As for myself, even though I could easily switch, I would feel dirty. Well, dirtier.)

  0
• TimAhrens Posts: 34

  June 19

  I’m open to make it available in other environments/font editors but it has to be economically feasible.
  

  4
• Nick Curtis Posts: 113

  June 19

  I’m open to make it available in other environments/font editors but it has to be economically feasible.

  May I humbly suggest that such is a two-way street. Personally, I find kerning to be rather tedious and would be willing to pay handsomely for a tool which reliably cuts the tedium down.

  
  

  2
• Alex Visi Posts: 133

  June 20

  The tool seems to be very interesting at least from the website demos, great job Tim!
  
  However, I’m curious whether setting up the models, “debating” with the computer and then making sure it has kerned everything correctly and/or correcting the result could be more time consuming than old-fashionly running through a carefully made kerning list manually?

  0
• Adam Ladd Posts: 214

  October 15

  Wondering if anyone has tried to implement this and any feedback so far? I'm close to the kerning phase on a current family, so I'm curious (I think the trial ends soon... Oct. 31).

  0
• Florian Pircher Posts: 87

  October 15

  Messanges Big and Small by Malou Verlomme has been kerned by this tool. Both offer a free Regular style that you can inspect.
  

  3
• Vasil Stanev Posts: 660

  October 16 edited October 16

   would be willing to pay handsomely

  Me too.
  
  
  

  1
• jeremy tribby Posts: 78

  October 17

  Adam Ladd said:

  Wondering if anyone has tried to implement this and any feedback so far? I'm close to the kerning phase on a current family, so I'm curious (I think the trial ends soon... Oct. 31).

  
  

  personally I will never go back to kerning another way. there have been so many tools to promise what kern-on can do, and it is the first to truly deliver, IMO.

  
  

  Alex Visi said:

  I’m curious whether setting up the models, “debating” with the computer and then making sure it has kerned everything correctly and/or correcting the result could be more time consuming than old-fashionly running through a carefully made kerning list manually?

  
  

  my experience has been that the "debating" with kern-on mostly improves my spacing! it's great. if it suggests something that seems off, more often than not, I find that my sidebearings are the real problem even if only by a couple of units.
  

  
  

  RE: carefully made kerning lists - what kern-on would primarily offer you is that you could trim down the list considerably, most likely. you still need to train kern-on with model pairs, and examples of pairs that should not be kerned.
  

  
  

  more generally though, I would say kern-on is a different workflow for kerning, and one that I prefer. I think it de-risks the reasons why you normally kern at the very end, and instead allows you start kerning toward the end. this may seem subtle, but working with a huge glyphset, adding some extra glyphs and stylistic sets, occasionally re-thinking some spacing decisions, etc — all that stuff that comes up in the last mile of a font, this de-risks it. if you've already kerned the font with kern on, you can make changes and just hit the "run" button again and there's no harm. of course, if you start kerning too early, you will run into spacing issues.
  

  
  

  in any case, I dont mean to sound like an advertisement. it saves me a ton of time on this font I'm working on with 1400 or so glyphs across many masters, and the results are good, so I'm a fan.
  

  9