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Kerning between a Character and a Tab doesn't seem to work


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Can I kern between a tab and a character? Or only character/character? I have a string of numbers I want evenly spaced over [oh, maybe I should just try justifying the text and not use tabs] my flower icons. I used a tab stop of about 36 pt to repeat, but some of the numbers still don't fit just right. 

I thought I could then go in between the tab and a number character and adjust the kern pair, but that doesn't seem to make a change. What's going on?

My af file is too large to add here, so I'll add to dropbox shared with me earlier today on another topic. File name "Kerning with Tabs"

Karen

Kerning with Tabs not working

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15 hours ago, Karenq said:

Can I kern between a tab and a character? Or only character/character?

AFAIK, it's only Character/character, I've tried this in your test document and in a new document with different fonts and it appears as though the Kerning options aren't applied to Tabs.

Unfortunately I'm missing the font used in your document - so it's not displaying quite as it should for me - however justifying the text may work for you :) 

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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8 minutes ago, Dan C said:

AFAIK, it's only Character/character, I've tried this in your test document and in a new document with different fonts and it appears as though the Kerning options aren't applied to Tabs.

Kerning controls the way pairs of characters work together visually, so it wouldn’t make sense for it to apply to invisible elements such as tabs or spaces.

Alfred spacer.png
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)

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15 hours ago, Karenq said:

Can I kern between a tab and a character? Or only character/character?

Kerning influences glyphs of a font only, spaces included.
Tabs are different because they always have an absolute, numerical value for its position. If they would move with kerning (or tracking, too) then their position would have to change, too, and that way destroy a kind of grid which you may want to create by tabs.

Instead you can use tabs with its alignment point set to center:

466518013_tabalignmentcenter.jpg.8c13a8571de3edc20d79017a651417b5.jpg

 

With such a setting you still have the option to increase the distance between characters – without changing their tab distances – by using the Tracking option in Character panel:

1469463218_tabsversustracking.jpg.61bf62d26e9df8d2c69718f6c21608cf.jpg

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Unfortunately I could not manage yet for centered tabs to use the 1 default value – instead I need to create manually a list of each single tab.

It appears that this easy 1 setting works always and only with left aligned tabs and can not be used to multiply centered tabs in one same repeating distance. Or am I missing the correct use, @Dan C ?

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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6 minutes ago, thomaso said:

glyphs of a font only, spaces included

Good point!

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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)

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Thankyou all for your responses.

Ah yes, of course, about kerning pairs and tabs set to a grid increment.

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

Unfortunately I could not manage yet for centered tabs to use the 1 default value – instead I need to create manually a list of each single tab.

It appears that this easy 1 setting works always and only with left aligned tabs and can not be used to multiply centered tabs in one same repeating distance. Or am I missing the correct use, @Dan C ?

I did try to set my tab align to center point, but then AF crashed. I may end up breaking the text blocks into two groups, 0-9 and 10-20 to see if that works better.

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2 hours ago, Karenq said:

I did try to set my tab align to center point, but then AF crashed. I may end up breaking the text blocks into two groups, 0-9 and 10-20 to see if that works better. 

If the crash is repeatable for you even with other content and documents you might want to post a bug report.

When you use the workaround with 0-9 and 10-20 in separate text frames you don't need tabs at all :) Simply set the two text frames to "Aligned All" and adjust via frame width:

948505369_tab-alignmentwithnotabs.jpg.79ccf5c3617546e1a0aef2a8f38cf302.jpg

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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4 hours ago, thomaso said:

If the crash is repeatable for you even with other content and documents you might want to post a bug report.

When you use the workaround with 0-9 and 10-20 in separate text frames you don't need tabs at all :) Simply set the two text frames to "Aligned All" and adjust via frame width:

948505369_tab-alignmentwithnotabs.jpg.79ccf5c3617546e1a0aef2a8f38cf302.jpg

Okay. I did a lot of fiddling, and many crashes. But I'll do a more systematic test in separate file with different fonts. (Maybe the font had something to do with it).

I tried justifying the text with single and double digits, but it didn't work either. Maybe I had tabs still rather than just a space between numeral. I'll try again.

Thanks!

4 hours ago, thomaso said:

 

 

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HI Thomaso -- Now I know what my issue was with justifying; I cannot figure out how to adjust the text box (maybe I'm using the wrong text tool). When I expand my box, it stretches the width of my text too.

Oh , well, I figured it out.
It worked when I used the text tool that's i a box (the frame tool). I was trying to do it with the artistic text tool. still learning.

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