Letter spacing

[ienissei]

When using EB Garamond, I am finding that the text is a bit crammed up together and this really does tend to cause bad like-breaks on every page, using (Xe)LaTeX. There is probably not enough space between letters (and words), and also not enough shrink/stretch allowed by default.

Note: my documents generally come out without overflows with more "mature" typefaces (like Adobe Garamond or Junicode). This really is an issue as it makes the text almost impossible to debug properly.

Love your work, otherwise :)

[georgd]

I admit that the spacing of EBG is rather tight which is inherited from its renaissance example, also at some points it probably needs improvement. But I don’t see how this could be responsible for bad line-breaking. The line-breaks in the documents I set are all fine and in accordance with my language’s hyphenation rules. Neither line-breaking nor interword spaces can be influenced by the font as far as XeLaTeX is concerned. If you want looser letterspaceing you need to apply some tracking. But I don’t know how to do so in XeLaTeX

[ienissei]

Thank you for your reply. I understand your point – perhaps it is an issue with typographic settings and language (French has very long words, not always easy to hyphenate). I also don’t know how to sensibly add tracking to the font – because we probably don’t want it to apply equally to all letters –, and kerning cannot be adjusted automatically. But what I was thinking really, is to add more shrinkable space within the font (if that is possible) so that it could be more flexible that way. Or perhaps adding stretch to the interword spaces would help.

Whether with LaTeX or XeLaTeX, the same 50 page document gives me no errors or just a couple of them while using Libertine or Junicode, and several dozens with EB Garamond (not counting the indexes in either case). I want to release a class out of it, but I can’t tell the user “go fix the line breaks”, so at the moment I have to settle for the other two fonts. But nothing beats Garamond, and you have done a really good job with it. For my own use, I rely on Adobe Garamond (which incidentally has almost exactly the same x-width, tracking and kerning as Junicode), but it isn’t free or open source and it doesn’t know greek (what a bunch of thieves…).

Le 3 mars 2014 à 08:18, georgd [email protected] a écrit :

I admit that the spacing of EBG is rather tight which is inherited from its renaissance example, also at some points it probably needs improvement. But I don’t see how this could be responsible for bad line-breaking. The line-breaks in the documents I set are all fine and in accordance with my language’s hyphenation rules. Neither line-breaking nor interword spaces can be influenced by the font as far as XeLaTeX is concerned. If you want looser letterspaceing you need to apply some tracking. But I don’t know how to do so in XeLaTeX

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[georgd]

Am 2014-03-03 12:14, schrieb ienissei:

Thank you for your reply. I understand your point – perhaps it is an issue with typographic settings and language (French has very long words, not always easy to hyphenate).

Not very long, compared with German words ;) What you describe looks to me like a hyphenation problem rather than a font problem. With which words do you get overfull lines?

I also don’t know how to sensibly add tracking to the font – because we probably don’t want it to apply equally to all letters –, and kerning cannot be adjusted automatically.

I think, with microtype, tracking should work at least in pdfLaTeX. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it would respect the font’s kerning.

But what I was thinking really, is to add more shrinkable space within the font (if that is possible) so that it could be more flexible that way.

There’s no such thing as shrinkable space in a font. All kind of such changes is done in the typesetting application itself.

Or perhaps adding stretch to the interword spaces would help.

As I said, in XeLaTeX interword spaces are independent from the font. So there’s no way I can influence it.

Whether with LaTeX or XeLaTeX, the same 50 page document gives me no errors or just a couple of them while using Libertine or Junicode, and several dozens with EB Garamond (not counting the indexes in either case). I want to release a class out of it, but I can’t tell the user “go fix the line breaks”, so at the moment I have to settle for the other two fonts. But nothing beats Garamond, and you have done a really good job with it. For my own use, I rely on Adobe Garamond (which incidentally has almost exactly the same x-width, tracking and kerning as Junicode), but it isn’t free or open source and it doesn’t know greek (what a bunch of thieves…).

Le 3 mars 2014 à 08:18, georgd [email protected] a écrit :

I admit that the spacing of EBG is rather tight which is inherited from its renaissance example, also at some points it probably needs improvement. But I don’t see how this could be responsible for bad line-breaking. The line-breaks in the documents I set are all fine and in accordance with my language’s hyphenation rules. Neither line-breaking nor interword spaces can be influenced by the font as far as XeLaTeX is concerned. If you want looser letterspaceing you need to apply some tracking. But I don’t know how to do so in XeLaTeX

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

--- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/georgd/EB-Garamond/issues/61#issuecomment-36500779

EB Garamond: http://www.georgduffner.at/ebgaramond

[ienissei]

I will look into the tracking options (you can do that with XeLaTeX too, there is a fontspec option). The hyphenation problem would not be font dependent, so I suppose it has more to do with typographic settings, including tracking. Perhaps I need to tweak the settings for EB Garamond to behave like fonts with more space between letters do. So, I will spend some time checking whether adjusting it can give better results.

Thank you for your suggestions, and sorry for coming up with a question that is not within your work’s scope, Best regards,

Le 3 mars 2014 à 13:41, georgd [email protected] a écrit :

Am 2014-03-03 12:14, schrieb ienissei:

Thank you for your reply. I understand your point – perhaps it is an issue with typographic settings and language (French has very long words, not always easy to hyphenate).

Not very long, compared with German words ;) What you describe looks to me like a hyphenation problem rather than a font problem. With which words do you get overfull lines?

I also don’t know how to sensibly add tracking to the font – because we probably don’t want it to apply equally to all letters –, and kerning cannot be adjusted automatically.

I think, with microtype, tracking should work at least in pdfLaTeX. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it would respect the font’s kerning.

But what I was thinking really, is to add more shrinkable space within the font (if that is possible) so that it could be more flexible that way.

There’s no such thing as shrinkable space in a font. All kind of such changes is done in the typesetting application itself.

Or perhaps adding stretch to the interword spaces would help.

As I said, in XeLaTeX interword spaces are independent from the font. So there’s no way I can influence it.

Whether with LaTeX or XeLaTeX, the same 50 page document gives me no errors or just a couple of them while using Libertine or Junicode, and several dozens with EB Garamond (not counting the indexes in either case). I want to release a class out of it, but I can’t tell the user “go fix the line breaks”, so at the moment I have to settle for the other two fonts. But nothing beats Garamond, and you have done a really good job with it. For my own use, I rely on Adobe Garamond (which incidentally has almost exactly the same x-width, tracking and kerning as Junicode), but it isn’t free or open source and it doesn’t know greek (what a bunch of thieves…).

Le 3 mars 2014 à 08:18, georgd [email protected] a écrit :

I admit that the spacing of EBG is rather tight which is inherited from its renaissance example, also at some points it probably needs improvement. But I don’t see how this could be responsible for bad line-breaking. The line-breaks in the documents I set are all fine and in accordance with my language’s hyphenation rules. Neither line-breaking nor interword spaces can be influenced by the font as far as XeLaTeX is concerned. If you want looser letterspaceing you need to apply some tracking. But I don’t know how to do so in XeLaTeX

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

--- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/georgd/EB-Garamond/issues/61#issuecomment-36500779

EB Garamond: http://www.georgduffner.at/ebgaramond — Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[georgd]

While I’m not sure that it’s a font inherent problem I’m still interested. Would you mind sharing an example document that shows your issue? If you prefer to do so you can contact me directly via email.