kernDump

Various scripts for analyzing, reading and writing kerning information. These can be helpful for analyzing kerning (and the loss thereof) through various stages of font production.
Some of these tools have been presented at ATypI Amsterdam 2013.

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convertKernedOTFtoKernedUFO.py

Extracts kerning and groups from a compiled OTF and injects them into a new UFO file (which is created via tx).

Dependencies: getKerningPairsFromOTF.py (same repo), fontTools, tx (Part of the Adobe FDK)
Environment: command line

python convertKernedOTFtoKernedUFO.py font.otf

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dumpkerning.py

Just van Rossum wrote this script. It imports all of the getKerningPairsFromXXX scripts (except VFB), and therefore can dump kerning from all kinds of formats (except VFB). Results in a .kerndump file at the location of the input file.

Dependencies: getKerningPairsFromFEA.py, getKerningPairsFromOTF.py, getKerningPairsFromUFO.py (same repo)
Environment: command line

python dumpkerning.py font.otf
python dumpkerning.py font.ufo
python dumpkerning.py kern.fea

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getKerningPairsFromFEA.py

Extract a list of all kerning pairs that would be created from a feature file. Has the ability to use a GlyphOrderAndAliasDB file for translation of “friendly” glyph names to final glyph names (for comparison with the output of getKerningPairsFromOTF.py)

Dependencies: None
Environment: command line

python getKerningPairsFromFEA.py kern.fea
python getKerningPairsFromFEA.py -go <path to GlyphOrderAndAliasDB file> kern.fea

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getKerningPairsFromOTF.py

Extract a list of all (flat) GPOS kerning pairs in a font, and report the absolute number of pairs.

Dependencies: fontTools
Environment: command line

python getKerningPairsFromOTF.py font.otf
python getKerningPairsFromOTF.py font.ttf

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getKerningPairsFromUFO.py

Extract a list of all (flat) kerning pairs in a UFO file’s kern object, and report the absolute number of pairs.

Dependencies: defcon or Robofont
Environment: command line or Robofont

python getKerningPairsFromUFO.py font.ufo

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getKerningPairsFromVFB.py

Extract a list of all (flat) kerning pairs from a VFB’s kern object, and report the absolute number of pairs. Run as a FontLab script.

Dependencies: FontLab 5
Environment: FontLab Studio 5

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kernInfoWindow.py

(Silly) visualization of absolute kerning distance. Example of using the above getKerningPairsFromUFO.py from within Robofont.

Dependencies: getKerningPairsFromUFO.py (above)
Environment: Robofont