Kerning for Fraction

[Jim Slade]

I have fractions, as in one-half, as 1_2.

How can I kern such that the "_" is centered below the "1." I cannot seem to get the "_" to extend past the "1." I get something like 1  .

[Ron P.]

Like this?

I just typed the Numerator giving it an Underline, then hit enter, typed the Denominator. It also had the Underline, so I highlighted it, and removed the Underline from it.

Curious, why not just use the Fraction setting found in the Character panel, Typography? Granted it does not place one above the other, but uses the common / (slash).

[MikeW]

I don't know how well the original Nutso font works in Affinity applications as I have modified a version a little (as well as rolled a heavily modified version of the code into one of my fonts). It's a sans serif font that does nut fractions. Nutso is available on Github.

[MikeW]

Oh. For common fractions (1/4, 1/2, 3/4), you need to remove the autocorrect entries from the preferences...

[Seneca]

I haven't checked Nutso font myself but according to this post from 2018 Affinity Designer handles it correctly. Unless something changed in v2.

https://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=7783

[MikeW]

4 minutes ago, Seneca said:

I haven't checked Nutso font myself but according to this post from 2018 Affinity Designer handles it correctly. Unless something changed in v2.

https://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=7783

Should still work. I was in that thread--and it was frustrating...

[Jim Slade]

8 hours ago, Ron P. said:

Like this?

I just typed the Numerator giving it an Underline, then hit enter, typed the Denominator. It also had the Underline, so I highlighted it, and removed the Underline from it.

Curious, why not just use the Fraction setting found in the Character panel, Typography? Granted it does not place one above the other, but uses the common / (slash).

Except what happens with 1_16? These came from an InDesign file with a huge number of fractions.

[lacerto]

29 minutes ago, Jim Slade said:

Except what happens with 1_16? These came from an InDesign file with a huge number of fractions.

Affinity apps, as you mentioned, restrict negative kerning to the bounding box of the preceding character, which is a serious flaw. So whether you can achieve what you aim at much depends on the font, but would still not work other than with single figures, if even then (as in the screenshot below where "1" is very narrow and underscore character long (a workaround would be scaling down width of the underscore character to make it the same width as the figures).

 

InDesign does not have similar limitations:

If a workaround requires separate constructions, it does not work well in situations where any kinds of edits need to be done affecting the text flow and/or formatting, so unless fraction formatting cannot be used, a kind of a special font shown above might be a possible solution.

[MikeW]

Nutso...faffing around sucks.

[R C-R]

16 hours ago, Ron P. said:

Curious, why not just use the Fraction setting found in the Character panel, Typography? Granted it does not place one above the other, but uses the common / (slash).

Why not just use a slash between two numbers to get 'inline' fractions like 3/16 or 5/64 or the like? That doesn't require any special fonts so everything adjacent can be set using the same font.

[loukash]

Where there is a will, there is a way.
Sometimes you have to think literally a bit out of the box. 
Think the unthinkable.  

I actually got out of bed to post this as it occured to me while half asleep. Let's see if you can figure it out until I wake up.  

[lacerto]

[loukash]

Alright, my solution above is pretty simple, just subscript, superscript, kerning and No Break. Optionally vertical/horizontal scale if the dash is too thin or too thick, or if the basic sub/superscript results in odd sizes or positions. Can be saved as character styles.

The actual trick is the string sequence. Since we're doing a layout and no real time math, the exact character sequence doesn't matter:

This works around the bounding box limit of the preceding character as no characters will fully overlap.

[Jim Slade]

 

13 hours ago, R C-R said:

Why not just use a slash between two numbers to get 'inline' fractions like 3/16 or 5/64 or the like? That doesn't require any special fonts so everything adjacent can be set using the same font.

The illustrations come from a package that uses horizontal lines for fractions. Plus, the document has hundreds of fractions imported from InDesign.

[loukash]

3 minutes ago, Jim Slade said:

the document has hundreds of fractions imported from InDesign

That will be the tedious part then. Any Publisher solution will likely have to be fine-tuned manually and individually for each fraction.

[lacerto]

14 minutes ago, loukash said:

The actual trick is the string sequence.

I used the same trick. IMO it is really a convoluted "solution", and if the document needs to be distributed also digitally and copying is allowed, change of character sequence (especially in any scientific context, e.g. formulas, or just figures), could cause serious issues. I would personally use it in print-only context, and in isolated cases. If a document has lots of these, using a different kind of fraction notation, or a special font as shown above, would be the way to go (or if at all possible, using a different app).

[loukash]

4 minutes ago, lacerto said:

I used the same trick.

Yeah, it's no rocket science.  

1 minute ago, lacerto said:

I would personally use it in print-only context

Definitely.
Since the source is an IDML though, that's what I would have expected in this case.
For a technical digital document, why use a layout app in the first place?

[loukash]

5 minutes ago, lacerto said:

distributed also digitally and copying is allowed, change of character sequence (especially in any scientific context, e.g. formulas, or just figures), could cause serious issues.

Speaking of which though, you can't rely on an exact character sequence anyway when copying from a PDF.

[lacerto]

8 hours ago, loukash said:

For a technical digital document, why use a layout app in the first place?

Do you mean dissertations, documents with equations, etc? We have done dozens of them with InDesign, just using proper tools like MathType. Sources have been written in various ways, most often though using Word, but also with different kinds of LaTeX editing systems (typically on Linux). We normally just batch export equations from Word to EPS documents and then use scripts to make inline replacements in InDesign. No need for resizing and very little need for manual adjustments, and the layout can contain hundreds of equations.

These are robust workflows and make it possible to create sophisticated technical publications without needing to use tools like FrameMaker, but getting proficient with workflows involving scientific text and miscellaneous technical elements naturally takes some time, and proper tools, and often also scripting skills. Publisher certainly is not a tool that I would dream to use for anything like this.

8 hours ago, loukash said:

Speaking of which though, you can't rely on an exact character sequence anyway when copying from a PDF.

No, but just copying from a PDF text elements like this:

gives you this:

a) When PDF is produced from Publisher, doing the kinds of silly tricks shown in this thread:

_28417+6b23

b) When produced from InDesign, using just kerning:

81 + b3 _ 24762

c) From a PDF when using inline equations produced with MathType and used as inline EPS/PDF/WMF equations:

81 + b3
24762

More complex equations could not of course be copy pasted at all, but then again, you also would not get mixed character orders etc. And you can use search to successfully find character string sequences within fractions, equations etc.