User Guide

the first character in the Metrics Window, no kerning guide
appears: there is no previous character with which to kern.
In order to create a new kerning pair, or to modify an
existing pair, simply click anywhere on the line and drag it
around until the kern pair looks right.
As you drag these indicators around, you can watch their
values change interactively in the spreadsheet area.
Fontographer’s multiple levels of Undo and Redo are active
for each character in the window. To move through a
particular character’s set of undo’s, select that character
and then choose “Undo” from the Edit menu.
Of course, moving the character itself around between the
sidebearings is very straightforward. Simply click on any
character, and move it left or right! If you hold down the
Shift key, the character movement is constrained to up and
down with respect to the baseline. If you hold down the
option or Alt key, you can move it anywhere you want: over
a bit, up off the baseline, etc.
A good technique for manually creating kerning pairs is to
enter the left character, “T” for example, and enter a
character like “a” for the second character. Select
character “a” and the kerning line appears. Click on the
kerning line and move the mouse to adjust the kerning.
When you have kerned “Ta” to your liking, you can choose
Next Character from the View menu, and the Metrics
Window will update itself to show “Tb.” You probably
don’t want to kern that one though, so you can leave it
alone and just choose “Next Character” again until you see
another pair you think needs kerning. This is an easy way
to move quickly through all the combinations of characters.
Once you have made lots of kerning pairs, you can step
through them all with Next Kerning Pair and Previous
Kerning Pair, also found in the View menu. This way, you
can see all the pairs which you’ve kerned, and ignore those
you didn’t kern.
If a character is selected, you can choose a new character
simply by typing a different letter. However, be sure you do
not have a blinking insertion cursor somewhere else in the
window. If you did, you would enter a new value into that
field. You can easily tell if typing a new character will
Fontographer User's Manual
5: Metrics: Spacing and Kerning Page #13