Kerning in Palatino Linotype not working properly

[Interior Book Design]

Palatino Linotype is a popular font, both on Macs and PCs. However, Publisher (and maybe all Affinity apps) don't seem to be able to unleash the full potential of this font as far as kerning is concerned.

Look:

1.) Kerning is switched off

2.) Kerning is switched on (in German word processor TextMaker, but in InDesign CC 2019/2020, it looks exactly the same)

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3.) Kerning in Affinity Publisher, working only partially

By the way: Word is not better than Publisher, nor is QuarkXPress 2018 or InDesign CS6.

[Gitta]

Johann-Christian Hanke,

here are my results with the popular Palatino Linotype.ttf font with regard to the kerning pairs concerned. Kerning has been turned on.

MS Word 2007: Topf, Typ, Vogel, Wolke (kerning is completely done without having edited the font).

Affinity Publisher 1.8.3.627 (Beta): Topf, Typ, Vogel, Wolke (kerning is done only after editing the font).

Please see attached font.

All the best

Gitta

PalatinoEdited.ttf

[Interior Book Design]

Thanks, Gitta, interesting,

so, do you think the font is wrong and needs to be mended? This is nothing an "ordinary" user can do. Word 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 displays it wrongly, too, so does LibreOffice.Writer and QuarkXPress 2018. InDesign CC 2019/2020, however, does a great job.

Is it something the font vendor needs to fix or is it the app's fault?

Kind regards

Johann

[kenmcd]

10 hours ago, Interior Book Design said:

Is it something the font vendor needs to fix or is it the app's fault?

This is a problem in the font.
I assume you are using the Palatino Linotype (v5.03) which comes with Windows.
That font only has a limited number of kerning pairs (148), and no "Wo" pair (kinda crazy).
Compare that to Palatino LT Pro which has 4,298 kerning pairs, including the "Wo" pair.

APub, LibreOffice, etc. are only going to use what kerning is in the font.
Did you have Optical Kerning turned On in InDesign?
That may have adjusted the kerning for the "Wo" pair.

Or this could be another case where ID is doing some special manual adjustments to help users deal with common font issues. I am sure many other ID/Windows users have asked the same question that you did, so they may have fixed the font problem, so they do not get blamed, and to help users of a very commonly used font.

[Interior Book Design]

No, I did not have optical kerning turned on in InDesign. And it doesn't explain why TextMaker 2018 (not 2016) does such a great job, a program that is not know for excellent typography.

[kenmcd]

As I mentioned above, this means InDesign and TextMaker are applying their own kerning rules to make-up for fonts which are missing even the most basic required kerning.

It appears they have their own default kerning table which is used when the font is missing the most basic kerning pairs (i.e. Wo).

APub should consider adding this feature.

[MikeW]

16 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

As I mentioned above, this means InDesign and TextMaker are applying their own kerning rules to make-up for fonts which are missing even the most basic required kerning.

It appears they have their own default kerning table which is used when the font is missing the most basic kerning pairs (i.e. Wo).

APub should consider adding this feature.

Set to metrics, ID is exactly like the APub image in the opening post.

[kenmcd]

Which version of ID did you use?

The first post states that ID 2019/2020 and TextMaker look the same - and the image shows kerning on the "Wo" pair in the TextMaker screenshot.

My laptop is currently completely Adobe-free so I did not test.