While I am fine-tuning the kerning of a typeface I am finalizing, I was wondering — bearing in mind the expected needs of the average-to-advanced user of typefaces aimed at extended text setting — which could be the kerking pairs (or groups of pairs) which one might not immediately think about that is effectively handy to have incorporated in a professional font.
Or, inversely, these you can easily do without (ordmasculine and ordfeminine are used with letters?).
Any thought or consideration is welcome! :-)
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One of the texts I use in Fontlab 8 to test the kerning is at the following address:
Kerning Test · Typefacts
I hope it can help you.
I was thinking more if anyone has certain pairs (not necessarily "linguistic") which have proved to be handy/important, pairs which maybe one does not always think about.
Clearly at some point it becomes a choice how much to incorporate, but I was thinking of possible suggestions from typesetters rather than from us typedesigners (i.e. "I’d love not to have to kern that pair by hand each time!").
I was also thinking of more conventional situations, belonging to historical typography, which one might not consider a priority. I know there are professional designers which do not even consider numerals a priority, so I was wondering about the various experiences.
Thanks Adam!
Edit: another one often overlooked is phonetic glyphs that are often poorly kerned or clash.
These should also be designed to fit nicely.
I use a string like this, adapted to all lowercase letters:
aAarm Basic aCard Date Far
aJackal Karma Lad aMage aOath
aPasqua Rail aTake aValue
aXandar aYale
For economy reasons, I tended to exclude pairs which for the usual forms of letters are very unlikely to happen, but /M is included as, while in many alphabets can have vertical sides, when the inclination of vertical stems is marked, it could benefit from some kerning.
cAct cCcel Eco Fclub cJcain cKcal
cLc cMcnally cOcra Pci Rcine
cTcine cVclose cXcity cYcle
So, yes, I thoughr about possible cC<lowercase> benefitting from kerning, but in general the cC pair fares fine by itself, and so the Ca (which is nonetheless included in my /a basic string. It’s a work in progress.