10

Is it just me, or is the spacing between the letter 'f' and the following quotation marks incredibly tight in MinionPro? I am already using the loosequotes option, but as far as I can tell, that only increases the distance of the quotes from the text inside them.

Problem:

Problem

Look at the difference in spacing between Minion Pro, Computer Modern and Palatino, and also look at how much better the spacing looks between the letter 'e' and quotation marks. The spacing looks way too tight for my taste.

Assuming that I am not absolutely insane and that other people notice the issue as well, is there an easy way to fix this?

I also have sample text for all letters of the (English) alphabet followed by quotation marks, but I think the letter 'f' looks the worst.

Alphabet output

MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[loosequotes]{MinionPro}

\renewcommand{\ttdefault}{cmr} % Computer Modern | #yolo
\renewcommand{\sfdefault}{ppl} % Palatino        | #yolo


\usepackage{parskip}


\newcommand{\sometextsingle}{Issue of `Minion Pro' font}
\newcommand{\sometextdouble}{Issue of ``Minion Pro'' font}


\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
Minion Pro               & \sometextsingle          & \sometextdouble\
\texttt{Computer Modern} & \texttt{\sometextsingle} & \texttt{\sometextdouble}\
\textsf{Palatino}        & \textsf{\sometextsingle} & \textsf{\sometextdouble}
\end{tabular}


\renewcommand{\sometextsingle}{Issue of the `Minion Pro' font}
\renewcommand{\sometextdouble}{Issue of the ``Minion Pro'' font}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
Minion Pro               & \sometextsingle          & \sometextdouble\
\texttt{Computer Modern} & \texttt{\sometextsingle} & \texttt{\sometextdouble}\
\textsf{Palatino}        & \textsf{\sometextsingle} & \textsf{\sometextdouble}\
\end{tabular}


\vspace{0.5cm}


\begin{tabular}{ll}
a Minion Pro' & AMinion Pro'\
b Minion Pro' & BMinion Pro'\
c Minion Pro' & CMinion Pro'\
d Minion Pro' & DMinion Pro'\
e Minion Pro' & EMinion Pro'\
f Minion Pro' & FMinion Pro'\
g Minion Pro' & GMinion Pro'\
h Minion Pro' & HMinion Pro'\
i Minion Pro' & IMinion Pro'\
j Minion Pro' & JMinion Pro'\
k Minion Pro' & KMinion Pro'\
l Minion Pro' & LMinion Pro'\
m Minion Pro' & MMinion Pro'\
n Minion Pro' & NMinion Pro'\
o Minion Pro' & OMinion Pro'\
p Minion Pro' & PMinion Pro'\
q Minion Pro' & QMinion Pro'\
r Minion Pro' & RMinion Pro'\
s Minion Pro' & SMinion Pro'\
t Minion Pro' & TMinion Pro'\
u Minion Pro' & UMinion Pro'\
v Minion Pro' & VMinion Pro'\
w Minion Pro' & WMinion Pro'\
x Minion Pro' & XMinion Pro'\
y Minion Pro' & YMinion Pro'\
z Minion Pro' & ZMinion Pro'\
\end{tabular}


\end{document}
Community
  • 1
sudosensei
  • 4,072
  • 1
    You have to report this to the editors of this font. This looks really very narrow. Easiest way in order to fix this would be to search for f ' and replace it by f\kern x.xpt'. See here about the topic of kerning adjustment: http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/10455 – LaRiFaRi Jun 18 '14 at 11:21
  • 2
    the "f" is almost always wider than its nominal width; that is why ligatures were created, and kerns were developed for metal type, and the italic correction for tex. take a look at this question for an explanation: How does italic correction work? – barbara beeton Jun 18 '14 at 12:40
  • @LaRiFaRi With egreg's answer and Barbara's comment about italic correction, do you think that the issue is something I should still report? How would I go about doing that? Thank you. – sudosensei Jun 18 '14 at 16:27
  • @barbarabeeton Thanks for the interesting link. egreg's answer resolves the issue by adding italic correction manually. – sudosensei Jun 18 '14 at 16:28
  • @sudosensei You should still report it to the font creators/maintainers so that they may add a permanent fix. – Sverre Jun 19 '14 at 14:13
  • @Sverre I would love to do that, but I do not know how to proceed. I can't find any contact information on the Minion Pro Adobe page. Any pointers would be appreciated. – sudosensei Jun 20 '14 at 15:49

1 Answers1

8

The letter “f” extends past its bounding box; this is usually not a problem for normal text; in this case, however, the space between “f” and the left quote seems too small for making the quote prominent.

The protrusion is not as big in Computer Modern and is absent in Palatino.

Solution: add the italic correction (\/ after the letter 'f').

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Minion Pro}

\begin{document}

\begingroup % show the bounding boxes
\setlength{\fboxsep}{0pt}
\setlength{\fboxrule}{0.1pt}
\fbox{f} \fbox{`}\endgroup

f `Minion'

f\/ `Minion'
\end{document}

enter image description here

Note: I don't have the fonts for pdflatex, so I used XeLaTeX, but it should be the same.

sudosensei
  • 4,072
egreg
  • 1,121,712
  • That does it! Thank you! I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of clarifying how italic correction is added – I had no idea what changed initially. :-) – sudosensei Jun 18 '14 at 16:25