Text has wrong/no kerning applied

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

I am trying to use the Text command to create outline curves from text, I noticed that in the Text box the preview text has the correct kerning applied, but once you create the text it doesn’t.

Is there a way to create text with the proper kerning? Not having the correct kerning in the text it outputs means it is totally useless except for monospaced fonts. Using text that isn’t kerned correctly in anything is probably one of the highest sins in graphic/product design.

Here is the textbox with the preview and the result in Rhino. See how the kerning is wrong in Rhino where it looks like its just using the same value for all letters. In the preview it is using the correct font kerning values.

text_kerning
text_kerning1028×772 71.9 KB

Is this just a bug or is Rhino not able to create the text it shows in its preview? Is there a different way to create text as geometry in Rhino other than importing an Illustrator file?

Here is a comparison between Text generated by Rhino (top) and imported from Illustrator as curves, which shows how wrong the one generated by Rhino is:

text_kerning_illustrator
text_kerning_illustrator969×574 48.4 KB

2 Likes
2

I think the only way to achieve this would be to use something that can already render the text properly. All solutions seem to rely on Rhino’s Text Object, which doesn’t handle kerning. I’m guessing the preview in the Text Box in Rhino comes from Windows and handles kerning properly.

I found this: https://www.npmjs.com/package/text-to-svg

Something like that would be great as a plugin and using the svg output. It specifically has a “kerning” input.

I know Rhino isn’t a graphics software as such, but for product design you would think that it should be able to produce proper text, for say embossing a word on a product or something. Having to produce the text in another software exporting and importing in to Rhino seems like an unnecessary step, when even Notepad can handle kerning properly.

3

Yes, I think so too.

Philip

4

Got that, thanks.

https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-52520

-Pascal

5

RH-52520 is fixed in WIP

4 Likes
6

Thank you! Seems like the average time for a youtrack item is 5 years… noted. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: