Are there any settings in Publisher to force Proportional Font into Monospaced look?

[ChungCK]

Are there any settings in Publisher to force Proportional Font into Monospaced look?

[GarryP]

Not that I can remember seeing, but someone else may know more.

Whether there are or not, is there some reason why you cannot use a monospaced font?

Also, what are you trying to achieve? If we know what you are doing there may be a different way to achieve it.

[Alfred]

In a proportional font, M is wider than average and i is narrower. Imposing a monospace look (e.g. by careful tracking and kerning) will result in large gaps between letters other than M and W, and especially huge gaps around narrow letters.

[David in Яuislip]

I think the answer is no

[Old Bruce]

You could use Tabs, with appropriate spacing, after each letter. Best practice would be to use a Monospace Font. As a reader I expect Monospace text to be in a different font, but that is just me.

[kenmcd]

3 hours ago, ChungCK said:

Are there any settings in Publisher to force Proportional Font into Monospaced look?

No. You cannot modify the character widths to be the same in any easy way.

Best to use an actual monospaced font.

If you want to modify a particular font to be monospaced... Monospacifier (https://github.com/cpitclaudel/monospacifier) is an option. But, not going to be as good as an actual monospace font.

Are you trying to use this together with a CJK font? (mono Latin characters are often available in CJK fonts)  There are utilities which would allow you to merge your custom mono font with another font.

[lacerto]

If this is just for an effect, you could use a spreadsheet app to split a character string to individual characters, copy paste the formula results as values and then copy paste transposed to rows (records), and then import the resulting source document into a Data Merge Layout grid. The amount of cells horizontally and vertically would determine the spacing and leading. 

a) In Excel:

b) In Publisher, using Data Merge Layout Tool in eight different ways (and orders the letters are fetched):

 

[ChungCK]

14 hours ago, GarryP said:

Not that I can remember seeing, but someone else may know more.

Whether there are or not, is there some reason why you cannot use a monospaced font?

Also, what are you trying to achieve? If we know what you are doing there may be a different way to achieve it.

My thoughts are from here:
https://letters.temporarystate.net/entry/3/

I'm just thinking, if I have a set of “text type” that's proportional, 
is it possible to convert it into monospace for practical use in typesetting?

Anyway, thank you all for answering my question ^_^”

[lacerto]

6 hours ago, ChungCK said:

I'm just thinking, if I have a set of “text type” that's proportional, 
is it possible to convert it into monospace for practical use in typesetting?

I think @kenmcd above answered to that question.

As for "thoughts" expressed in the referred link, it included the following wisdom, which basically states that form has no function:

"The abandon of proportional typesetting is a long awaited and necessary reform of the Latin alphabet and only the bourgeois tastes of the general public, who adore the oudated "beauty" of proportional typesetting, hinder the inevitable progress."

I have no words, but to me it seems that this writer only has characters and words, no thoughts. I am not sure under which rock they have lived but there are plenty of monospace types available in OpenType bourgeois misery (and earlier digital font technologies).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monospaced_typefaces

[thomaso]

17 hours ago, lacerto said:

If this is just for an effect, you could use a spreadsheet app to split a character string to individual characters,

Do you know whether this solution requires a certain, newer Excel version? My "Office for Mac 2011" (v14.7.7.) reports an "invalid name" for the formula "=MID(B2;SEQUENCE(1;LEN(B2));1)" while the Help doesn't have an entry for "Sequence".

[lacerto]

Please check first that it is not just a question of different argument separator (; is used in Finnish Excel). You can work around it by using something like =MID($B2;COLUMN(A2);1), and copying it ad finitum (as far as there are columns, which is 16,384 in current versions of Excel and LibreOffice Calc, and 1,000 [conveniently "ALL" as the column address] in Numbers). 

[thomaso]

Also =MID($B2;COLUMN(A2);1) creates the error "invalid name". – I haven't been aware that the formula is language related. The very long list of available expressions indicates that terms used for a formula have to be used in the "local" way.

Thank's @lacerto, never mind … I was just curious but don't really need this. Apparently my Excel skills are far too limited.

[lacerto]

1 minute ago, thomaso said:

that terms used for a formula have to be used in the "local" way.

That is possible. Personally I have always considered this a nuisance. There once was a Finnish professor who translated C language to Finnish (If = Jos in Finnish) 🙂

[thomaso]

4 minutes ago, lacerto said:

Personally I have always considered this a nuisance.

Indeed, it also would / could prevent Excel files from working correctly if they get shared between different countries. Because this feels kind of useless I guess there is a workaround I am simply not aware of. Never mind … your solution is interesting anyway.

[lacerto]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Indeed, it also would / could prevent Excel files from working correctly if they get shared between different countries.

I think they are autotranslated (and one might accordingly assume that function names could be written in any of the supported languages, but this is not so).

As for the solution, it might be practical at least in situations where it is necessary to produce printed (variable width) characters to be attached to physical pieces that have the same width, to facilitate alignment. Additionally it is of course a useful method to have any common background repeated on all instances.

[v_kyr]

11 hours ago, ChungCK said:

My thoughts are from here:
https://letters.temporarystate.net/entry/3/

I'm just thinking, if I have a set of “text type” that's proportional, 
is it possible to convert it into monospace for practical use in typesetting?

Well that's just a matter of using and switching to related fonts from a font family here. - For what you've referenced there the guy is using the "Panama" font family (he's the creator of those fonts) which includes also monospace variations of that/a Panama font. If you inspect his HTML webpage associated stylesheet settings (style.css),  you can see that he used different mono fonts from that font family.

So using a propotional vs monospaced font here is just a matter of the associated font type usage for certain text passages/paragraphs. And in order to keep a visual similar font look between propotional and monospaced text here then, it makes sense to use some font family which already comes along (which includes) both of such font type variations.

[Old Bruce]

12 hours ago, ChungCK said:

My thoughts are from here:
https://letters.temporarystate.net/entry/3/

I read a few of the little essays there. Not one word about legibility. In other words the author isn't interested in the reader's comprehension of the text. It seems that only the time spent by a typeface designer making a new font is worth considering.

Why do we set text? For readers, not the designers of typefaces, nor for programmers of applications that present text.

Use a monospaced font.

[kenmcd]

18 hours ago, ChungCK said:

My thoughts are from here:
https://letters.temporarystate.net/entry/3/

People are being too nice. That guy is full of 💩.

18 hours ago, ChungCK said:

I'm just thinking, if I have a set of “text type” that's proportional, 
is it possible to convert it into monospace for practical use in typesetting?

You still have not really explained why you want to do this.
And what exactly you mean by "practical use in typesetting."
Text type is generally proportional for multiple reasons (as mentioned above).
The nonsense in that article about old monospace texts and justification, etc., etc. is just that - a bunch of double-speak nonsense.

There is no way to automatically convert a proportional font to monospace - and end up with a high-quality result. Simply stretching and squeezing results in distortions which must be fixed by the designer (e.g. diagonals often have the wrong width, characters with slanted contrast axes can get very distorted, serifs can get distorted, and on-and-on). This is why there has been substantial debate and differing opinions regarding stretching/squeezing characters for justification.
And some character shapes must change dramatically (e.g. i, l, t, 1, etc.).
So any automatic method conversion is not going to be the same quality as a font designed as monospace, with character shapes optimized for that purpose.

The free Recursive variable font has a mono axis which can demonstrate the transition from proportional to monospace.
Demo: https://www.recursive.design/#toolbar

We may be able to help if you will explain your goal.

Are you trying to mix mono Latin text with a mono CJK font?
There are many free CJK fonts which already have mono Latin characters included.

Hopefully this is not just trying to follow the nonsense in that article.

So what is the final goal?

 

[ronnyb]

On 6/14/2023 at 10:27 PM, ChungCK said:

My thoughts are from here:
https://letters.temporarystate.net/entry/3/

@ChungCK You’re asking for a simpler way to scratch your left ear with your right hand without using your right hand while ignoring you have a left hand. Just use fonts for their intended purposes, instead of trying to jam a round peg into a square whole. Just say NO! to woke 🏳️‍⚧️ trans-typography!

As for the author of those essays (actually nothing but 💩 nonsensical drivel, as @kenmcd rightly asserts): tell me you’re a dirty rotten communist without telling me you’re a communist… kerning being bourgeois is the stupidest statement a “designer” can make. This person is not a designer, in fact only an ivory tower ideologue with no idea of the interplay between form and function, as @Old Bruce explains. 

I suggest you delete that bookmark from your computer and browsing history. Try to purge from your mind whatever else you read from that website before it decomposes your neocortex into a soup of diarrhea.