User defined kerning tables

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madrifa

Dear Scribus addicts or developers team.

Recently I switched to Linux (specifically to CentOS 6) for most of my desktop computing needs (from Windows XP).

One of few a things, for which I ocassionally still boot into Windows, is DTP work. I do not do a professional DTP job already, but I still use Quark as a default DTP app, as I cannot understand the dumb workflow model of Word and all other office-like wordprocessing apps.

Somewhat 8 or 9 years back I have heard about a "freeware Quark replacement" called Scribus, so I decided to give it a try, but I left it as immature and turned back to Quark on Windows.

Nowadays, finding out that Scribus is still under active development, I decided to give it a second chance. My first impressions of a current Scribus v1.4.3 are very positive, and after a few hours of playing with it, often accompanied by loud Woows, I already decided to try using it as my primary DTP app. So I put all my fonts into Linux and went to import all the kerning tables I have created for them over two decades.

But oops... Either Scribus do not support user-kerning-tables (although, the file format should not be a concern, as they are a pure text files), or I just could not find how to import them. I have tried hard, and googled a lot, but to no avail.

So my question is: Does Scribus support user defined kerning tables as they was known in Quark? If yes, how do I import them?

Nermander

As far as I know Scribus does not support kerning tables other than those in the font itself.

So my suggestion is to have a look at if you can instead use FontForge to make a copy of the font with a custom kerning table.

leaf

Quote from: madrifa on February 28, 2014, 05:54:32 AM
But oops... Either Scribus do not support user-kerning-tables (although, the file format should not be a concern, as they are a pure text files), or I just could not find how to import them. I have tried hard, and googled a lot, but to no avail.

Try use QuarkXPress 7(Rating Gold) or 9 (Rating Silver) or 10 (Rating Gold) on Linux - playonlinux/wine. Perhaps it will be any solution.
more is here: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=24899


madrifa

Nermander,

Thanks for your suggestion. I tried FontForge and it works! I can edit anything and after saving the changes, the modified font perfectly works in Scribus! I am impressed.

Well, one may ask "why shouldn't it work". True. I tried editing fonts just few times back in the 90-ties and it did not work at all, damaging the font to the extent it even locked-up Quark completely, maybe even the whole OS, I don't remember, nor I remember the font editor I have used then, but it was a total fail.

It is quite nice to see how significantly some things have improved.

Leaf,

Well, that would be another clever way, but I wanted some up-to-date app, and don't wanted to pay lots of $$$ for a new Quark. I wanted a free DTP app for free OS.

Anyhow, Thank you guys for your bright suggestions.