Re: Got those old bad kerning blues

[Dale Snell]

On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 6:40 PM G. Branden Robinson
<g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I don't like the way the roman \[lq] is kerned with
> the bold \[rs] in the attached example, produced with
> "groff -Tpdf".
>
> Who do I complain to?  Er, that is, where should
> I look for the source of the problem?  Is the kerning
> information for the Times family incorrect?  Is my PDF
> viewer (evince) screwing up?  Is the kerning formally
> fine and simply doesn't align with my preferences?

Hi Brandon,

I'd say blame the kerning for the Times family.
I tried this with both TeX-Gyre-Pagella typeface
(which is what I usually use), and Times.  TGPagella
turned out fine.  My version with Times looked the
same as yours.  Ick.  I'd be playing games with MOM's
kerning escapes to get that to look right.  (Hm, be
right back...)  Okay, I just tried it.  Looks like
a \*[FU 4] or \*[FU 5] would fix it.  But of course,
that only works in MOM; I don't know how to fix
kerning in other macro packages.  Besides, this sort
of thing is strictly a band-aid.  It's the typeface
that needs to be fixed, IMHO.

As for the PDF viewer, I don't think it matters.
I used my favorite qpdfview as well as evince, and the
problem was the same in both.

Hope this helps.

--Dale

-- 
“Okay, look.  We’ve both said a lot of things you’re
going to regret.  But I think we can put our
differences behind us.  For Science.  You monster.”
    --GLaDOS, Portal 2