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<TITLE>The Metric Menu</TITLE>
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<P>
<H1 ALIGN=Center>
The Metrics Menu
</H1>
<P>
This menu is not present in the Bitmap View, and the Metrics View only contains
"Center in Width" and "Thirds in Width".
<P>
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="#Center">Center in Width</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#Thirds">Thirds in Width</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#Width">Set Width...</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#LBearing">Set LBearing...</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#RBearing">Set RBearing...</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#Auto">Auto Width...</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#Kern">Auto Kern...</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#Remove">Remove All Kern Pairs</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#vertical">Set Vertical Advance</A>
</UL>
<P>
<DL>
<DT>
<A NAME="Center">Center</A> in Width
<DD>
In the Outline and Metrics Views this centers the current character (makes
its lbearing be the same as its rbearing) within the current width.
<P>
In the Font View the same thing is done for all selected characters.
<DT>
<A NAME="Thirds">Thirds</A> in Width
<DD>
This is very like Center in Width above... except that I happen to prefer
having a bit more white space after my characters than before them. So this
command makes the rbearing twice the lbearing (instead of making them be
the same).
<DT>
Set <A NAME="Width">Width</A>...
<DD>
<IMG SRC="setwidth.png" WIDTH="290" HEIGHT="186"><BR>
The Set Width command allows you to change the width of the current character
(in the outline view) or all selected characters (in the font view). You
may either set the width to an absolute value, change the width by adding
a constant value to it, or multiply it by a scale factor.
<DT>
Set <A NAME="LBearing">LBearing</A>...
<DD>
The Set LBearing command is similar to the Set Width command above, the dialog
is pretty much the same except that it applies to the left side bearing rather
than to the width.
<DT>
Set <A NAME="RBearing">RBearing</A>...
<DD>
The Set RBearing command is similar to the Set Width command above, the dialog
is pretty much the same except that it applies to the right side bearing
rather than to the width.
<DT>
<A NAME="Auto">Auto</A> Width...
<DD>
This command is only available in the font view.<BR>
<IMG SRC="autowidth.png" WIDTH="276" HEIGHT="316"><BR>
The Auto Width command will attempt to guess reasonable widths (more accurately
reasonable left and right side bearings) for your font. The command looks
at all possible combinations of indicated characters (if you request more
than 300 characters it will only look at the first 300 to avoid running out
of memory (300*300 takes up a fair amount of room). You must specify two
different sets, one for the character on the left (which will have its right
side bearing adjusted) and one for the character on the right (which will
have its left side bearing adjusted. I know that sounds backwards but think
about it a little), of course these two sets may be the same. You may apply
the command to all characters in the font (if there are few than 300 of course),
to all the selected characters, the the characters A-Z, a-z and 0-9 or to
a list of characters you specify yourself (characters may be specified either
by themselves or by a range, so "ace-g" means the characters a, c, e, f and
g (if you put commas and spaces in the list they will be treated as characters.
If you want to specify a hyphen, put it first or last, so "-a-z" means hyphen
and all letters a-z)). <A HREF="metricsview.html#Entering">For information
on entering non-ASCII characters see that section in the metrics view</A>,
ranges are based on Unicode code points.
<P>
Last of all the Spacing text box allows you to say how close you want the
characters to be. If you look at a sanserif capital I, and you autowidth
it with itself (and nothing else) the sum of the left and right side bearings
should be equal to the spacing. If you have serifs and curved letters things
are more complex, but that is roughly what's going on. The number here is
chosen to be a reasonable spacing for a sanserif font. You may need to adjust
it to suit your own preferences.
<DT>
Auto <A NAME="Kern">Kern</A>...
<DD>
This command is only available from the font view. <BR>
<IMG SRC="autokern.png" WIDTH="276" HEIGHT="395"><BR>
The Auto Kern dialog looks almost exactly like the Auto Width dialog above.
For each character pair, it will set the sum of <BR>
<right bearing of
left character> + <left bearing of right character> + <kern>
= <spacing> + <character shape fudge factor><BR>
The "fudge factor" is determined by dividing the character into a series
of zones (it figures out where the serifs are and each serif has its own
zone (descender, baseline, x-height, ascender, cap-height), then the gaps
between the serifs are also zones). It looks for the closest approach of
the two characters within each zone and performs a complicated average to
figure out the fudge. If that fudge would lead to a <kern> which causes
any zone to be too close then it is adjusted up. The exact method is subject
to change as bugs are found.<BR>
If the absolute value of a <kern> is less than the threshold then no
kerning information will be produced for that pair of characters. If the
algorithm (and any previously existing kern pairs) lead to more pairs than
specified by "Total Kerns" then a new threshold value will be determined
and any pairs whose <kern> is less (in absolute value) than this new
threshold will be removed.<BR>
Remember kerning is not part of PostScript®, whatever word processor
you use needs to read the kerning information from the afm file.
<DT>
<A NAME="Remove">Remove</A> All Kern Pairs
<DD>
In the font view removes all kern pairs in the font.<BR>
In the outline character view removes all kern pairs where the current character
is the left hand character.<BR>
Not present in the Metrics or Bitmap views.
<DT>
Set <A NAME="vertical">Vertical</A> Advance...
<DD>
If vertical metrics are enabled for the font this will be active in the font
and outline character view.<BR>
It behaves exactly like Set Width... except it works on the vertical advance
rather than the horizontal advance (width).
</DL>
<H2>
Other menus
</H2>
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="filemenu.html">File</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editmenu.html">Edit</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="pointmenu.html">Point</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="elementmenu.html">Element</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="hintsmenu.html">Hints</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="viewmenu.html">View</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="metricsmenu.html">Metrics</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="cidmenu.html">CID</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="windowmenu.html">Window</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="helpmenu.html">Help</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="HotKeys.html">Hot Keys</A>
</UL>
<P ALIGN=Center>
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