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  • This is the Adobe Garamond Pro small caps as appeared on the official Adobe spec sheet: enter image description here

  • This is what I got from XeLaTeX with \setmainfont and \textsc{}: enter image description here

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[ItalicFont=AGaramondPro-Italic.otf,
BoldFont=AGaramondPro-Bold.otf,
BoldItalicFont=AGaramondPro-BoldItalic.otf,
Numbers=OldStyle]
{AGaramondPro-Regular.otf}

\begin{document}

\textsc{small capital} is not the same as SMALL CAPITALS scaled down,
 but either kerning or letter spacing is off.

\end{document}

The shapes of the glyphs are correct, i.e. XeLaTeX knows where and how to find true small caps instead of just making up fake ones by scaling down regular caps, but just why are the kernings SO OFF???

Meatball Princess
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    I don't think the kerning is incorrect. Rather, it seems that Adobe's spec sheet uses letterspacing for small-caps. Are you restricted to using XeLaTeX, or could you switch to LuaLaTeX (which offers various letterspacing possibilities). – Mico May 04 '19 at 20:19
  • @Mico Then either Adobe is withholding vital information regarding the best practices of using their font, i.e. you need letter spacing to achieve the best visual result, or XeLaTeX is ignoring this information shipped with the .otf file? – Meatball Princess May 04 '19 at 20:30
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    "Best visual result" is personal opinion. IMO the letter spaced small caps just look ugly. Whatever, if you look at https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/products/type/pdfs/AdobeGaramondPro.pdf the kerning in the type samples on page 14 appears to match what you get from TeX, but the sample texts starting on page 18 have an assortment of different letter spacings for the small caps, unless my eyes are playing tricks. – alephzero May 04 '19 at 20:45
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    … and if the small cap spacing for "FOREST" at the top of page 27 of that PDF is supposed to be "best practice", I think I would switch to Comic Sans rather than look at that all day ;) – alephzero May 04 '19 at 20:51
  • "Adobe is withholding vital information regarding the best practices of using their font" -- a specimen book is not intended as a full-fledged a typography guide. You can use letterspecing with fontspec, though (see the approach for xelatex + tufte classes here, for instance). –  May 06 '19 at 18:28
  • For what it's worth: If you set small caps in Adobe InDesign, the letter spacing is identical to what XeLaTeX produces... In other words, there is no need to rant about anything other than Adobe. If you are really interested in best practices, you should have a look at something like Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. – DG' May 06 '19 at 18:56

0 Answers0