Adjust tracking, Turn fractional character widths off or on, Special characters – Adobe Illustrator CS4 User Manual
Page 327: About character sets and alternate glyphs, Glyphs panel overview
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USING ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS4
Type
•
To turn off kerning for selected characters, set the Kerning option in the Character panel to 0 (zero).
Adjust tracking
1
Select the range of characters or the type object that you want to adjust.
2
In the Character panel, set the Tracking option.
Turn fractional character widths off or on
By default, the software uses fractional character widths between characters. This means that the spacing between
characters varies, and will sometimes use only fractions of whole pixels.
In most situations, fractional character widths provide the best spacing for type appearance and readability. However,
for type in small sizes (less than 20
points) displayed online, fractional character widths could cause type to run
together or have too much extra space, making it difficult to read.
Turn off fractional widths when you want to fix type spacing in whole-pixel increments and prevent small type from
running together. The fractional character width setting applies to all characters on a type layer—you cannot set the
option for selected characters.
❖
Do any of the following:
•
To set type spacing for the entire document in whole-pixel increments, choose System Layout from the Character
panel menu.
•
To re-enable fractional character widths, choose Fractional Widths from the Character panel menu.
Special characters
About character sets and alternate glyphs
Typefaces include many characters in addition to the ones you see on your keyboard. Depending on the font, these
characters can include ligatures, fractions, swashes, ornaments, ordinals, titling and stylistic alternates, superior and
inferior characters, old-style figures, and lining figures. A glyph is a specific form of a character. For example, in certain
fonts, the capital letter A is available in several forms, such as swash and small cap.
There are two ways to insert alternate glyphs:
•
The Glyphs panel lets you view and insert glyphs from any typeface.
•
The OpenType panel lets you set up rules for using glyphs. For example, you can specify that you want to use
ligatures, titling characters, and fractions in a given text block. Using the OpenType panel is easier than inserting
glyphs one at a time and ensures a more consistent result. However, the panel works only with OpenType fonts.
Glyphs panel overview
You use the Glyphs panel (Window
> Type > Glyphs) to view the glyphs in a font and insert specific glyphs in your
document.
By default, the Glyphs panel displays all the glyphs for the currently selected font. You can change the font by selecting
a different font family and style at the bottom of the panel. If any characters are currently selected in your document,
you can display alternate characters by selecting Alternates For Current Selection from the Show menu at the top of
the panel.