![]() Just the fact that automatic hyphenation is turned on by default is silly enough - because InDesign is not that great at deciding where a hyphen should appear within a word. Right, last we have hyphenation and, again, the defaults are ludicrous : … and will lead to better results - not perfect, but better : Settings which make just a little more sense look something like this : all the adjustments to a line of text happen between the words - none between the individual characters - and those adjustments range from 133% word spacing (big gaps) down to 80% (words running together). Those numbers are invariably going to lead to shit results. This is because the default justification settings look something like this : the default justification settings that come with InDesign are simply insane and lead to this kind of abomination : So, when working with a new font, always check both automatic kerning methods to see which will give you the least disappointing results. InDesign allows no such finessing - we are stuck with the shitty kern-pairs that come with the font or we take our chances with optical kerning. so, with Quark we could get in there and fix that diabolical ‘mu’ combination in the kerning table and then it would be corrected for every instance throughout the entire document. with Quark you have the option to correct dodgy metrics by editing the kerning tables. #Active tables indesig proand this for a font called Adobe Garamond Pro - you would think we should expect better from the metrics.Īnd here’s why InDesign doesn’t allow for great typography and why, in at least this one aspect, Quark shits all over InDesign. ‘his’ and ‘and’ are undoubtedly better using metrics kerning, but ‘winston’ and ‘musing’ are better when using optical kerning - the metrics don’t come up to scratch. Here are a couple of screen grabs showing the same portion of text using the two different automatic kerning methods :Īs you can see, neither of these methods is perfect. When you choose optical you are asking InDesign to override the typographer’s kerning tables and space the characters more or less visually based on the shapes of the characters. these metrics are generally known as kerning tables. a well created font will have metrics for all the most common character pairs - specifying, for example, the amount of space that should appear between ‘AB’, which will (at least, should) be different from the amount of space that appears between ‘AV’. When you choose metrics you are using the mathematical settings created by the typographer. which one of those is best for a particular font depends on how good the type designers were at doing their job. The first thing to check when you’re working with a particular font is what result you get with each of the automatic kerning options - metrics and optical. this post is about automatic kerning, justification and hyphenation. unfortunately, InDesign doesn’t really allow for great typography - but that’s something we’ll touch on in a moment. With a little bit of effort you can turn poor typography into ok typography in your body copy. ![]()
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