Re: Features needed for high-end DTP apps

[Patrick <pabos glypsube org>]

Hi Joaquin.

> If your goal it's top quality DTP, then you should also try to do
> optical kerning.  The literature about how to do acceptable optical
> kerning is almost inexistant, but if you're looking for something that
> can compete with InDesign, you need it.

I'm not clear on what optical kerning is. The example shown in this
article: http://www.adobe.com.au/print/features/indesign/main.html
suggests optical kerning shows the kerning value between each glyph and
allows you to visually drag the line representing the kerning amount to
visually change the spacing. There must be more to it than this ...
 
> >  o Tracking - customizable for fonts based on their various sizes,
> >    and also for particular paragraphs. Again, some scripts may prefer
> >    to extend characters rather than add space.

As is probably evident by now, I'm not entirely familiar with DTP
requirements. Can somebody elaborate on tracking? I'm not clear on the
specifics of what it accomplishes.

> If you're looking for top-of-the-crown quality, I have some ideas to add
> to that list, but imo almost all of that stuff should be out of pango. 
> You should also be aware that many people has tried before to make a
> high level, high typographic quality library, without success (I guess
> that big projects are too attached to their implementation, to throw it
> out and pick another one that any cheap application can have).

Can you elaborate on your top-of-the-crown quality list?


---
Patrick