[Scribus] OT kerning (or tracking) specs.

[jon]

There is no "normal" spacing between letters.
Common terminologies  I am used to are (overall)letter 
spacing(=tracking), word spacing and kerning.
1st and 2nd are self explanatory the third does belong to individual 
letter spacing between pairs.

Xpress uses 1/200 em space for manual kerning or letter 
spacing(tracking).
InDesign uses 1/1000 em space.
Fontmetrics (kerning tables) are always applied.

And, imo, yes, I think it's common for some designers to use wrong 
terminolgy.
Because for "kerning 250" you need to specify wich pair of letters you 
shall kern, it's more likely she or he
asks for tracking (+).

All you need is to find out wether she or he wants 250/1000 em or 
250/200 em or something else someother
program might use.

Jon


Am 20.01.2007 um 03:13 schrieb John R. Culleton:

> I have a customer who has a designer who has specified the setting of 
> certain
> text headings etc. with the terminology:
> "kerning 250"
> or
>  "kerning 40"
>
> I am not familiar with this particular terminology. Neither is my 
> InDesign
> consultant.  It looks like 100 may be normal letter spacing but I am 
> not
> sure. In any case I would call this tracking rather than kerning.  
> Since it
> isn't TeX and isn't InDesign teminology I assume it is Quark-speak.
>
> Any Quark folk on list who have seen this kind of specification 
> before?   If
> so can you explain what is desired in the two instances shown above? 
> Are
> these 100th parts of an em or an en?  I hate to look ignorant to my 
> customer
> but my experience is primarily in TeX where fiddling with letter 
> spacing is
> more or less anathema.