Pair Kerning for better typography in PDF?

[cjcbrown]

Is there a way to get pair kerning for text in paragraphs, in a PDF generated by Flare?

I am implemeting a Flare PDF that matches our company's print standards for look and feel, and the default paragraph font does not come out very well. Compared to a FrameMaker PDF anyway. The only setting that's different is, in FrameMaker I can turn on pair kerning.

In the example below you can see the excess white space after uppercase W, V, and lowercase m, w, h, and a little bit with e.

Flare PDF - no pair kerning
Font Sylfaen, size 10, line spacing 12, letter-spacing -1 px



FrameMaker PDF - with pair kerning
Font Sylfaen, size 10, line spacing 12, Pair Kern turned on

[cbdebris]

There aren't fine typography controls as yet. But I find that changing letter-spacing to 0px or 0pt helps the text to look better.
You might also experiment with the white-space setting.

Doesn't seem to be any easy way to remove the rivers, though.

[mjansari]

I think I'm having the same issue as well. See my topic about ArialMT replacing Arial. I'm doing the same thing as you creating a Flare template to match our company's print standards for look and feel. The kerning issue is only happening on 1 laptop with Win7. Have you tried generating the PDF on another PC? I took my template and tried it on 3 Win7 laptops (1 home, 1 work and 1 coworker) and 1 WinXP desktop all running Flare 6.1 and the kerning issue only happens on my work laptop with Win7. Try your template on another machine and take a look at the results.

[LTinker68]

You might also experiment with the white-space setting.

I don't think that attribute will do anything for this situation. The white-space attribute relates to word-wrapping, not spacing between characters.

[cbdebris]

You are correct Lisa, the white-space setting is for the space between words. Word spacing is a common kerning control as well. However, I haven't found it to provide significant enough control over the rivers in text.

[cjcbrown]

Update - got a nice response from MadCap tech support.

The issue was, the PC I was building on was set at 120 dpi in Windows Display Properties > Settings > Advanced > DPI Setting.
Turns out that for best typography the PC you build on must be 96 dpi.

It was the higher DPI on my PC that was causing the rivers. When I reset the PC to 96 DPI and rebuilt, the rivers were not there and quality was acceptable.