Stokestack Posted October 24, 2018 Author Share Posted October 24, 2018 And the kerning control in the secret Character panel doesn't work at all: Screen Recording 2018-10-23 at 10.40.34 PM.mov Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wosven Posted October 24, 2018 Share Posted October 24, 2018 Use kerning with the cursor between 2 letters, or tracking with words selected as in your video. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fixx Posted October 24, 2018 Share Posted October 24, 2018 Kerning is a basic feature and works in AD like in any other graphics software: place cursor between letters and press alt-arrow left/right. You can also do local tracking by selecting a range of letters and alt-arrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokestack Posted October 24, 2018 Author Share Posted October 24, 2018 Thanks for the responses, guys. But this contradicts earlier feedback, which indicates that you can do it with the dialog that I've captured above. Also, other software (Corel Draw, for example) uses the node-selection tool to let you space individual characters. So Designer does not work like "any other" graphics software. Placing the cursor between characters and using Alt does work, but it appears to fail when you hold the keys to repeat. Only after you release the keys do the characters suddenly jump to a new location. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted October 24, 2018 Staff Share Posted October 24, 2018 Hi Stokestack, The kerning controls in the Character panel only work if you place the cursor between characters in the text objects - in your clip the whole text object is selected thus the controls are unavailable. Tracking controls lets you adjust the text directly with the controls in the Character pane with the /whole) text object selected. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted October 24, 2018 Share Posted October 24, 2018 5 hours ago, Stokestack said: Thanks for the responses, guys. But this contradicts earlier feedback, which indicates that you can do it with the dialog that I've captured above. Also, other software (Corel Draw, for example) uses the node-selection tool to let you space individual characters. So Designer does not work like "any other" graphics software. Placing the cursor between characters and using Alt does work, but it appears to fail when you hold the keys to repeat. Only after you release the keys do the characters suddenly jump to a new location. I would say that Affinity software does have kerning/tracking like other software but that CD simply has an additional means for moving one or more characters via the nodes, and always has for that matter. CD had this capability of moving character(s) via the nodes before it actually had the ability to kern and track characters. But moving one or more characters via nodes is not kerning or tracking. Pšenda 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MickRose Posted October 24, 2018 Share Posted October 24, 2018 6 hours ago, Stokestack said: Placing the cursor between characters and using Alt does work, but it appears to fail when you hold the keys to repeat. Only after you release the keys do the characters suddenly jump to a new location. On my Windows system Alt left or right arrows does manually kern in real time. The text curser needs to be either blinking or have text selected. Quote Windows 10 Pro, I5 3.3G PC 16G RAM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokestack Posted October 25, 2018 Author Share Posted October 25, 2018 Thanks for the replies. On the Mac, if you press and hold Alt-arrow to space your characters, there is no visible result until you release the keys and the letters suddenly pop to a new location. Another bug is that the spacing control (the one that would have spread all the characters out) doesn't work if the current tool is the Text tool. If the current tool is the selection (arrow) tool, it works. Side note: Why is there no way to delete this giant empty video frame? kernProbs.mp4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted October 25, 2018 Staff Share Posted October 25, 2018 Hi Stokestack, 1. I'm still unable to recreate this on my system. Pressing and holding ⌥ (option/alt) + ← → (cursor keys) does have a visible effect on screen no matter if i hold the cursor key or not. There must be something else (os setting or third app interfering) here. 2. The tracking (spacing control) doesn't work in your clip with the text tool selected because you have to select some characters, words or sentences first. Resuming with the Move Tool the whole text block is selected and tracking is applied to all text equally. With the Text tools selected - note the cursor inside the text frame) - you have to explicitly select the bit of text you want to apply the Tracking to. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fixx Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 When I have Key Repeat set as "fast" Stokestack behaviour happens. Other settings adjust kerning slow or very slow :-) ...(I usually do my kerning with repeated key presses, not with keydown, so any of this does not happen.) Stokestack and MEB 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted October 25, 2018 Staff Share Posted October 25, 2018 Thanks FIxx. Issue reproduced here. I'm logging this to be looked at. Stokestack and BonBerg 2 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokestack Posted October 25, 2018 Author Share Posted October 25, 2018 Thanks for the reply. 10 hours ago, MEB said: 2. The tracking (spacing control) doesn't work in your clip with the text tool selected because you have to select some characters, words or sentences first. Resuming with the Move Tool the whole text block is selected and tracking is applied to all text equally. With the Text tools selected - note the cursor inside the text frame) - you have to explicitly select the bit of text you want to apply the Tracking to. Hm, this does not appear to be true. Please see attached screen grab. The bug appears to be that the tracking control doesn't work when the text tool is active but you haven't re-clicked on the text object. The tracking control doesn't require text to be selected (nor should it), so there's no reason it shouldn't work at all times when a text object is selected (regardless of the active tool). moreKerningProbs_edit.mp4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zenmom Posted December 28, 2019 Share Posted December 28, 2019 Thanks Toltec, solved my problem! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BonBerg Posted January 19, 2020 Share Posted January 19, 2020 Thank you Toltec, until I read your post I too was having issues with the "kerning" option. Now all is well and I can go on with my life, happily. Thanks again, however it would have been nice if this step-by-step process had been provided in the Affinity Design help guide, or as "MEB" offered a keyboard shortcut (control + arrow keys). Problem solved! Stokestack 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MartinM2 Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 (edited) I'm having a similar query regarding Kerning, the the Alt left key worked fine many thanks for that post. Edited April 25, 2020 by MartinM2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bad_Wolf Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 Hi all, Using "alt" together with "Left" or "Right arrow keys, change the kerning when placing the text cursor between letter pairs. When you use "alt" together with "shift" and the "Left" or "Right" arrow keys, you almost double the kerning. You can do the same for the "Leading" with the "alt" and "Left" or "Right" arrow key together. Raise the question, that kerning is not better done in the font itself? Imagine you do not need to kern only one pair but that there are several occasions in your document. Maybe a feature request for kerning tables inside Designer itself where we can set kerning for pairs used over the whole document would be an interesting request. Chris A_B_C, Wosven and Alfred 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 6 minutes ago, Bad_Wolf said: Maybe a feature request for kerning tables inside Designer itself where we can set kerning for pairs used over the whole document would be an interesting request This is something I’ve always been a fan of. That would be awesome, as there are still quite a few fonts with occasional bad kerning pairs around. 😣 Alfred 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 42 minutes ago, A_B_C said: This is something I’ve always been a fan of. That would be awesome, as there are still quite a few fonts with occasional bad kerning pairs around. 😣 Unfortunately, some fonts have many thousands of kerning pairs. I don’t think it would be reasonable to expect to be able to deal with such fonts effectively outside of a dedicated font editor. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bad_Wolf Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 To make my point clearer imaging there are hundreds of instances of the word "We" and lets assume the kerning has to be changed for all these words. When we can setup an application wide table with adjusted kerning values for a particular pair in the font, overtime this will result in a nice kerning table which Designer (or the other Affinity programs) can use to automaticly adjust the kerning. I agree that this preferably should be done in the font itself. However, when that is not possible, correcting in the Affinity suite should be excellent. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 1 hour ago, Alfred said: Unfortunately, some fonts have many thousands of kerning pairs. I don’t think it would be reasonable to expect to be able to deal with such fonts effectively outside of a dedicated font editor. Unfortunately, not many commercial font licences allow for modification. Adobe desktop fonts are an exception to this. However, with Typekit (the former name), SkyFonts and other cloud font services modification and use isn't even possible (in the long term anyway). Usage of application kerning tables has been in QXP, well, forever. Like the example Chris gave, it isn't like 10k pairs are going to be overridden. Even the best font authors may make decisions that seem odd compared to other font pairings in the same font. That said, one may be surprised at how few Q users even know they can make kern pair adjustments these days. I mainly see it when obtaining books from publishers that have begun in Q, or are to be specifically done in Q and the publisher has a house style and these pairings have already been made. Currently, in say ID, people have either blindly accepted poor kern pairings or have made character styles with kern settings and used GREP f/r to apply said c.style--unless Optical kern takes care of it (something APub/QXP, etc. do not have) but Optical kern may make such things worse. It's a pita to do semi-manually. A_B_C and Alfred 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 4 minutes ago, MikeW said: Currently, in say ID, people have either blindly accepted poor kern pairings or have made character styles with kern settings and used GREP f/r to apply said c.style That approach should also work on Publisher, shouldn't it? But not in Designer, of course, as it doesn't have Find/Replace. Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wosven Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 1 hour ago, Alfred said: Unfortunately, some fonts have many thousands of kerning pairs. I don’t think it would be reasonable to expect to be able to deal with such fonts effectively outside of a dedicated font editor. QXP manage this… Oups, @MikeW was faster ! And it's able to save the result as XML files (if I remember correctly), so you can keep them and use them on another computer. It can be handy in French when there's too much space between apostrophe/right single quote and the next character, for example. MikeW, Alfred and A_B_C 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: That approach should also work on Publisher, shouldn't it? But not in Designer, of course, as it doesn't have Find/Replace. Of course...I just wanted to throw a subtle jab in at Serif for the optical kern feature request too. Optical kern as in ID can, often does, mitigate unsightly kern pairings--even if I do seldom use it. Alfred, Wosven and walt.farrell 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 Yes, a solution like it is available in Quark would be awesome to have in Publisher. That’s what I had in mind. 😀 For Indesign, there’s also a list-based script by Peter Kahrel … FWIW … https://creativepro.com/files/kahrel/indesign/kern.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wosven Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 51 minutes ago, A_B_C said: script by Peter Kahrel … FWIW … I miss this one (there are so many), but I use GREP when needed, it's inside the document, invisible and easier for people afraid of using scripts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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