Flatten Kerning + Glyphs renaming custom parameter (Setting up MS PPT font in Windows)

Glyphs
1

Goal: to make sure kerning works in Windows PPT.
Achieved so far: it works in Word in Windows :slight_smile:

I have a 9-pole/master typeface with custom parameters subbing a intertwined W for a simple one in the “text” optical size exports.

image
image1730×560 65.8 KB

The kerning was done via kern-on and all looked good until applying the Kern Flattener script.

The script has a list of priorities in order to limit the number of pairs, but the alternate W (called “W.disp”, ends up with no kerning, as opposed to the regular original W which work in the display exports (those do not change W shapes).

image
image1138×640 89.7 KB

I have tried duplicating the kerning lines related to W using regex and adding W.disp, also tried scripting using chat-gpt to achieve a similar result with no luck.

This is probably a very niche thing, but having proper kerning in PowerPoint could be less painful than this.

PPT Mac works ok:

image
image1730×530 32.8 KB

PPT Windows – strangely enough the display version’s kerning work, but not the text.

image
image2578×802 150 KB

I validated the two different fonts and the one that does not display kerning has this:

image
image1920×803 251 KB

those being the W.

2

Any reason why the “W.disp” is not in the same kerning class as the “W”?

3

You can’t access alternates in PowerPoint.

4

It was in the same group until the kern flattener.py was used.

@mekkablue the different W are being exported as regular W, it’s just like that so that I can have both forms in the same file. In variable it changes from double V form to simple form from 24pt down.

5
  1. Kern Flattener removes all groups and all group kerning because there are no groups in the kern table.
  2. The script does not take alternates into account. You need to do that before you run Kern Flattener.
6

Got it!

7

Just took a deep breath and did it by hand.