First of all, thanks for this great module! It's saved my butt a couple of times already.

I'm interested to see if there's any way Signwriter can output rendered text with increased tracking (a more familiar term might be "kerning," but that refers to spacing between two specific characters, rather than common spacing between all characters on a line). On a basic level, this could just be an option to add a certain number of pixels between each character as they're being rendered. Here are a couple "proofs of concept" from the comments on PHP's imagettftext function:

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.imagettftext.php#60547
http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.imagettftext.php#74949

Is this possible within the scope of this module?

Comments

Agileware’s picture

Agileware CreditAttribution: Agileware commented
Version: 6.x-1.1 » 6.x-2.x-dev

Will look into this when I get a bit of free time.

Updating version.

hixster’s picture

hixster CreditAttribution: hixster commented

Hey Agile,

Did you ever get a chance to look at this, i'd love to use kerning. I have a project the uses fonts defined by a branding company and they have reduced the spacing between the characters quite a bit. The client wants the same effect on the site...

dave_______1’s picture

dave_______1 CreditAttribution: dave_______1 commented

Hi All,

Great Module, changes the font while keeping the SEO. Very nice.
It even works on mobiles, unlike Flash (sIFR) I've used before now.
The only problems is the Kerning/Tracking, which sIFR keeps and Signwriter doesn't seem to.

I'm using the DIN font family and the Kerning/Tracking is all off when I put it in Signwriter.

'BY' looks like 'B Y' and 'WI' looks too close.
On all programmes (e.g. Fireworks, Photoshop, Word, etc.) the font is fine and Kerning is perfect, but using Signwriter it seems off.

Any help?
Dave.

PMorris’s picture

PMorris CreditAttribution: PMorris commented

I think a lot of these programs use the kerning tables that come with the font, or use optical kerning that signwriter may not support? I know that doesn't really help any but maybe signwriter can support in the future.

dave_______1’s picture

dave_______1 CreditAttribution: dave_______1 commented

Hi Everyone,

I didn't get Signwriter to work for me this time as the Kerning was just too far out, but I have used the new CSS3 rules here:
http://deli-relish.co.uk/
It's not perfect because it doesn't work on every browser.

In the past I have also used sIFR which works as long as you have Flash installed.

So, to get everything working just right it would be great if all 3 of these came in 1 Signwriter module depending on the what the browser is capable of.

Hope this helps someone.
Dave.

Agileware’s picture

Agileware CreditAttribution: Agileware commented

@dave_______1:
Probably best to explain better why you are linking to your site (what css3 are you using for what text) so people don't think you are spamming.

Also if you are linking to your sites there needs to be good reason (ie. you can't explain what you want to explain without people actually seeing the site). So can you explain what css3 you are using in writing without needing the link to your site.

I notice a large number of your recent posts have links to your sites seemingly without good reason so it's just a bit of a 'be careful' because it is possible to get banned from drupal.org if the webmasters think you are spamming.

dave_______1’s picture

dave_______1 CreditAttribution: dave_______1 commented

Hi everyone,

To Agileware, thanks for the heads up.
Sorry to anyone who thinks I'm spamming, I like to give examples of work I'm doing to make everything I do transparent.
It's much more of an explanation if an example can be given with anything I'm trying to explain.

So, CSS3 I used instead of Signwriter was:

@font-face { font-family: FONT-NAME; src: url('/sites/all/libraries/fonts/FONT-FILE'); }
h2{font-family:"FONT-NAME", "Arial Narrow", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}

This only works for HTML5 browsers so old browsers will see the left nav in Arial Narrow

And to use sIFR try this page:
http://wiki.novemberborn.net/sifr/

If there was a way to put everything together in one module, that would be amazing.
Hope this helps someone

Dave