User Guide

will probably find yourself using the most. This option has
Fontographer select the ones which it thinks are most
common out of the 2,500 found; then, when it has exhausted
that set, it will generate the remaining pairs in order of
magnitude. This way, you will get a lot of common pairs,
and also the ones which need kerning the most.
Kerning speed allows Fontographer to use less memory
during Auto Kerning. Since Auto Kerning is already not
blindingly fast, you are strongly encouraged to choose the
Faster mode, and buy more memory if you need it.
Kerning technique tells Fontographer which internal
algorithm it should use to compare characters. “Examine
minimum distance” tells Fontographer to calculate kerning
by looking only at the smallest distance two characters are
from each other. For serif fonts, this can result in loose
kerning because serifs frequently come very close to
touching each other. In this case, Fontographer will be
essentially kerning the font by looking at the font’s serifs and
little else. “Examine average distance” and “Examine
weighted distance” try to compensate for that problem by
averaging the outlines a little bit—it will allow the serifs to
get closer if other parts of the character are further away.
Of those two options, the weighted one is supposed to be a
more optical kind of comparison. Since fonts vary so
drastically, and the sets of characters you can tell
Fontographer to use for Auto Kerning are limitless, there is
no meaningful way to document the differences in output
that these various techniques will show. Our advice, as in
Auto Spacing, is to try the different methods, and decide
which ones give the best results for you and your fonts.
The final Auto Kerning dialog is called Exceptions, and it
looks like this:
Check Change existing kerning pairs if you want to let
Fontographer, in the course of Auto Kerning, adjust kerning
pairs which have already been created. Unchecking this
locks the current pairs; if you go in the Metrics Window
and manually set up a bunch of new pairs, you can now
Fontographer User's Manual
5: Metrics: Spacing and Kerning Page #33