Re: [ft-devel] Peter Wiegel's auto spacing idea

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I think, that could work like this: the software has to build and
> you conture around any glyphe, in a way that the distance to the
> outline of the glyphe is depending on its form, so that the  new
> outline is closer to sharp edges then to straight lines. this could
> be done in the way I have described in the attached graphic.
> 
> First I have made a pixel copy of my letters. Then I have blurred
> this little picture and after that I had reduced all the gray pixels
> to black. this new picture can be traced, so I get a new outline
> around my glyphes. The next step is to move all the glyphs to
> gether, until the new outline we get in touch, so it must be
> possible to calculate a good value for this kerning pair. this could
> be done automatically with all glyphs in the font, or even with all
> possible combinations in any language.

Sounds nice.  I think it's not necessary to trace at all: Since
kerning for Latin fonts works in the horizontal direction only, it's
fully sufficient to work with the blurred bitmaps, shifting two glyphs
together until they touch.

It would be nice to see a font specimen sheets with kerns computed
this way, using various blurring radii.


    Werner