Recently I proposed to Microsoft the registration of a ‘Spacing axis’ in OpenType Font Variations. Tracking and CSS letterspacing are highly primitive mechanisms and they mess up spacing (for instance with unwanted negative side bearings) and ruin the kerning. Tighter and wider spacing should be controlled by the font producer and hence needs to be recalculated. Kerning pairs should be adapted too IMHO.
In the meantime I exchanged ideas with John Hudson and Peter Constable and this resulted in the axis definition and additional information below, which will be discussed at the upcoming TYPO Labs conference in Berlin:
1. Axis definition
Tag: ‘spac’
Name: Spacing
Description: Used to vary glyph spacing.
Valid numeric range: Any negative, zero or positive value can be used.
Scale interpretation: Values can be interpreted as per-mille-of-em changes in glyph spacing from ‘normal’ spacing.
Recommended ‘normal’ value: 0
Suggested programmatic interactions: Applications may choose to select a spacing variant in connection to user-selected layout settings for ‘tracking’ or ‘character spacing’.
2. Additional information
Glyph side-bearing distances are typically the primary aspect of design that varies, though other secondary details such as serifs may also be encompassed in this variation. Variation may also be applied to other font values that are sensitive to glyph metrics, such as kerning distances or mark anchor positioning.
The Spacing axis can be used as a variation axis within a variable font. It can also be used within a ‘STAT’ table in non-variable fonts within a family that has spacing variants to provide a complete characterization of a font in relation to its family within the ‘STAT’ table.
Some applications may use Spacing variants to implement layout features such as ‘tracking’ or ‘character spacing’. This may be limited to variable fonts that implement Spacing as also variable axis. Applications that do this can use the axis values in combination with the font’s head.unitsPerEm value to map between the axis-value scale and physical units such as points. When Spacing variants are selected in this way, applications should assume that the font will provide all of the spacing adjustment, and not apply any additional glyph metric adjustments.
3. Demo
I made a screen recording of a prototype font with a proprietary Spacing axis.
4. Spacing versus tracking
The following image shows on top a version of DTL Haarlemmer of which the spacing has been reduced with a fixed amount and of which the kerning has not been changed (i.e., what happens with tracking) and a version in which the character widths and the kerning have been adapted per character. In case of tracking a couple of characters, such as the /r and the/v, get a negative spacing. In the manually (optically) altered version (bottom) the right side bearing of the /r and both side bearings of the /v have been set to zero.
![]( "Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5019405/uploads/editor/q7/osrbq36qjagi.jpg")
In the image below the manually altered version is further refined by adapting the length of the serifs to the tighter spacing (top). This is in line with the method of first patterning (stem interval) and then adapting details like serifs to obtain equilibrium of space, instead of the approach of first designing details and then adapting the patterning to obtain an even distribution of space.
![]( "Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5019405/uploads/editor/il/vvl5huh0sas5.jpg")
5. Notes on the spacing method
For the prototype font I newly calculated the spacing of DTL Haarlemmer using the LS Cadencer tool –which is developed by Lukas Schneider– in RoboFont. The image below shows the ‘standard’ spacing.
![]( "Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5019405/uploads/editor/na/yqeh8f3bb7hb.jpg")
The following image shows the tighter spacing.
![]( "Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5019405/uploads/editor/ky/49aquh4pxvw9.jpg")
The LS Cadencer is based on a spacing algorithm I developed based on my investigation of Renaissance archetypal patterning. Lukas will demonstrate his ‘cadencing’ tools at the TYPO Labs 2017 conference on Thursday 6 April.
In the meantime I exchanged ideas with John Hudson and Peter Constable and this resulted in the axis definition and additional information below, which will be discussed at the upcoming TYPO Labs conference in Berlin:
1. Axis definition
Tag: ‘spac’
Name: Spacing
Description: Used to vary glyph spacing.
Valid numeric range: Any negative, zero or positive value can be used.
Scale interpretation: Values can be interpreted as per-mille-of-em changes in glyph spacing from ‘normal’ spacing.
Recommended ‘normal’ value: 0
Suggested programmatic interactions: Applications may choose to select a spacing variant in connection to user-selected layout settings for ‘tracking’ or ‘character spacing’.
2. Additional information
Glyph side-bearing distances are typically the primary aspect of design that varies, though other secondary details such as serifs may also be encompassed in this variation. Variation may also be applied to other font values that are sensitive to glyph metrics, such as kerning distances or mark anchor positioning.
The Spacing axis can be used as a variation axis within a variable font. It can also be used within a ‘STAT’ table in non-variable fonts within a family that has spacing variants to provide a complete characterization of a font in relation to its family within the ‘STAT’ table.
Some applications may use Spacing variants to implement layout features such as ‘tracking’ or ‘character spacing’. This may be limited to variable fonts that implement Spacing as also variable axis. Applications that do this can use the axis values in combination with the font’s head.unitsPerEm value to map between the axis-value scale and physical units such as points. When Spacing variants are selected in this way, applications should assume that the font will provide all of the spacing adjustment, and not apply any additional glyph metric adjustments.
3. Demo
I made a screen recording of a prototype font with a proprietary Spacing axis.
4. Spacing versus tracking
The following image shows on top a version of DTL Haarlemmer of which the spacing has been reduced with a fixed amount and of which the kerning has not been changed (i.e., what happens with tracking) and a version in which the character widths and the kerning have been adapted per character. In case of tracking a couple of characters, such as the /r and the/v, get a negative spacing. In the manually (optically) altered version (bottom) the right side bearing of the /r and both side bearings of the /v have been set to zero.
In the image below the manually altered version is further refined by adapting the length of the serifs to the tighter spacing (top). This is in line with the method of first patterning (stem interval) and then adapting details like serifs to obtain equilibrium of space, instead of the approach of first designing details and then adapting the patterning to obtain an even distribution of space.
5. Notes on the spacing method
For the prototype font I newly calculated the spacing of DTL Haarlemmer using the LS Cadencer tool –which is developed by Lukas Schneider– in RoboFont. The image below shows the ‘standard’ spacing.
The following image shows the tighter spacing.
The LS Cadencer is based on a spacing algorithm I developed based on my investigation of Renaissance archetypal patterning. Lukas will demonstrate his ‘cadencing’ tools at the TYPO Labs 2017 conference on Thursday 6 April.