[scribus] Why scribus lacks letter-spacing? was: how does scribus do justification?

[avox]

Tornoci Laszlo-2 wrote:
> 
> On 01/28/2010 06:56 PM, avox wrote:
>> Tornóci László-2 wrote:
>>> ... There is a wide belief
>>> that letter-spacing is from the evil (based in part on the above
>>> misquoted opinion of Goudy). I rather believe my eyes. There are lots of
>>> examples in the book "J Felici: The Complete Manual of Typography" of
>>> the same block of text set with different combination of H&J methods #1,
>>> #2 and #3. It is clear, that a combination of these methods gives the
>>> best results if used properly. I simply don't believe anyone can spot 3%
>>> letter-spacing.
>>>
>> So you would be content if letter spacing was limited to +/- 5% ?
>>
>> But what is the base value? Normal letter spacing is 0pt, so we can't
>> base it on that (well, in fact we already do ;-) )
>> You mean +/- 5% of the character width? Or +/- 5% of a given character,
>> e.g.
>> 'M' ?
>>
>> Give me a definition and I might be inclined to implement that.
> I am definitely not a font expert, so I have no idea what would be the 
> best definition. However, I don't think there is much difference between 
> any reasonable definitions. You change a setting, look at the result, 
> and either you like it, or change the setting again. So the setting 
> doesn't have to be exactly precise.
> 
> Here is what the Felici book (what I cited in my last letter) says:
> "Generally, these values are expressed as some percentage of *normal*. 
> For word spaces, *normal* means the width of a word space as it's 
> defined within the font being used. For letter spaces, *normal* is the 
> distance between characters when their bounding boxes abut but do not 
> overlap. Spacing adjustments based on tracking and kerning controls are 
> added on top of the spacing values calculated by the H&J program."
> 
> If I understand it correctly, this definition of letter space depends on 
> the character pair considered. It may be possible, to use the value of 
> an arbitrarily selected character pair.
> 

That sounds like the right bearing of the left char plus the left bearing of
the right char.
That's the most complicated case and might even slow Scribus down a little.
It also needs thorough testing since I'm not sure that all fonts define
left/right bearing correctly.

/Andreas

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