Kerning in Word 2004 (all updates have been applied)

[morejunk]

After moving to Leopard the kerning in Word 2004 is horrid!! Good old
fashioned True Type fonts (think: Times and Arial) work fine but the
fonts I've tried from Adobe's Font Folio 11 have one or another
kerning issue. I'm using Arno Pro and if I start a sentence with the
letters "Th" then next letter looks like it has a space inserted.
This does not happen in Pages 08 or in TextEdit. Arno Pro worked fine
in Word 2004 under Tiger but I don't see how this is a Leopard issue
especially since it only happens in Word.


Thanks.

 

[Elliott Roper]

After moving to Leopard the kerning in Word 2004 is horrid!! Good old
fashioned True Type fonts (think: Times and Arial) work fine but the
fonts I've tried from Adobe's Font Folio 11 have one or another
kerning issue. I'm using Arno Pro and if I start a sentence with the
letters "Th" then next letter looks like it has a space inserted.
This does not happen in Pages 08 or in TextEdit. Arno Pro worked fine
in Word 2004 under Tiger but I don't see how this is a Leopard issue
especially since it only happens in Word.

It is not kerning but ligatures. Look closely at Th fi and other common
ligatures, and again in TextEdit say. You will see that 2 characters
are combined into one.

It got turned on by default in Leopard. It caught Microsoft flat-footed.
They have no way to turn it on or off.
I think it is because MS have their own layout engine for producing
that distinctive ransom note look.

You are knackered. Keep off fonts with ligature alternatives. Use a
different word processor if you care about typography and care about
using decent fonts.

I recommend Pages. Cheap, fast, easy to learn and use. Exports to Word
(including Word 2007's .docx format, which is more than Word 2004 can
do without the flaky beta plug-in that expires in 5 weeks time) and
imports Word styles if you must.

I think I am about to be an ex-MVP.

 

[Clive Huggan]

It is not kerning but ligatures. Look closely at Th fi and other common
ligatures, and again in TextEdit say. You will see that 2 characters
are combined into one.

It got turned on by default in Leopard. It caught Microsoft flat-footed.
They have no way to turn it on or off.
I think it is because MS have their own layout engine for producing
that distinctive ransom note look.

You are knackered. Keep off fonts with ligature alternatives. Use a
different word processor if you care about typography and care about
using decent fonts.

I recommend Pages. Cheap, fast, easy to learn and use. Exports to Word
(including Word 2007's .docx format, which is more than Word 2004 can
do without the flaky beta plug-in that expires in 5 weeks time) and
imports Word styles if you must.

I think I am about to be an ex-MVP.

Dear dear, Elliott. Don't you know Microsoft's tagline for the MVP program
is "Independent experts. Real world answers"? You're giving a real-world
answer -- independently. I would not like to think any MVP would indulge in
self-censorship as a consequence of the accolade they receive for
outstanding effort in technical communities etc, and I don't see it in this
newsgroup. The reality is that Microsoft *does* get flat-footed as a result
of Word being ported across from Windows and being caught by Mac OS updates.
Whose fault it is is another matter; but it happens. No point in anybody
obfuscating it, n'est-ce pas?

Yours pontifically,

Clive
======

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Elliott:

I agree with Clive. You are here to be "Independent". I realise that "real
world" is asking too much of you. But "independent" will do

And you have to be a hell of a lot more provocative than that before
Microsoft will even flinch. Microsoft has been to Mac World. Compared to
the Mac Fanbois, you're a pussy-cat

Cheers

It is not kerning but ligatures. Look closely at Th fi and other common
ligatures, and again in TextEdit say. You will see that 2 characters
are combined into one.

It got turned on by default in Leopard. It caught Microsoft flat-footed.
They have no way to turn it on or off.
I think it is because MS have their own layout engine for producing
that distinctive ransom note look.

You are knackered. Keep off fonts with ligature alternatives. Use a
different word processor if you care about typography and care about
using decent fonts.

I recommend Pages. Cheap, fast, easy to learn and use. Exports to Word
(including Word 2007's .docx format, which is more than Word 2004 can
do without the flaky beta plug-in that expires in 5 weeks time) and
imports Word styles if you must.

I think I am about to be an ex-MVP.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Phillip Jones]

Doesn't make any difference to me if you suggest pages.

I wouldn't be able to buy OX.5 until after the Christmas season. So
Pages won't run on my machines. and I'm going to have to replace my
G4-500 and I am waiting until they ship natively with X.5 and on the
next gen Intel chip which probably won't be out until sept of next year.
and I am going to have to figure out how to swap the drives in my G4-500
so that My OSX.4 drive is not a slave drive so that I can just hook up
the two computers and transfer all my applications and files.

Hi Elliott:

I agree with Clive. You are here to be "Independent". I realize that "real
world" is asking too much of you. But "independent" will do

And you have to be a hell of a lot more provocative than that before
Microsoft will even flinch. Microsoft has been to Mac World. Compared to
the Mac Fanbois, you're a pussy-cat

Cheers

--
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[Clive Huggan]

Hello Phillip,

www.apple.com/iwork/systemrequirements.html says you can run Pages with:

A Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or PowerPC G4 (500MHz or
faster) processor
512MB of RAM (1G recommended)
32MB of video memory
Mac OS X version 10.4.10 or later
QuickTime 7.2 or later
iLife ¹08 recommended
1GB of available disk space
CD drive required for installation.

Cheers,

Clive
======