Visual spacing between live text option - - editable

[Boldline]

Visual spacing between live text option - Was thinking some of this as I was editing text today.

I was thinking of ways to make text editing more intuitive and less clunky. Right now it's all based on the character panel and some keyboard shortcuts. Nothing wrong with those, but what if there was a way to visually see the gap between letters and be able to click on a side of that rectangle visual and adjust the spacing like the way we can edit regular rectangle shapes? Maybe show a sizing number as well as it changes in size?

[b77]

@Boldline Interesting, but I see two shortcomings here:

What should be displayed in the 'LV' pair, where the left side of 'V' usually overlaps the right side of 'L'?
Or take 'LT' for instance, or 'AV', 'VA' and other pairs where we have overlaps?

Also, I'm not sure if this method that involves the dragging of pretty thin rectangles is faster or easier?
To be able to adjust them reliably you need to zoom in even closer than with the shortcuts, where you
can just place the text insertion point (the flashing vertical bar) and hit Ctrl-Option-Left/Right.

Btw, there is a Glyphs plugin that does something similar, but no visible rectangles are involved — you
just need to drag the letter itself to the left or right to change the kerning:

https://github.com/LucasFonts/Glyphs-MoveableSidebearings

[Boldline]

@b77 said in Visual spacing between live text option - - editable:

Also, I'm not sure if this method that involves the dragging of pretty thin rectangles is faster or easier?
To be able to adjust them reliably you need to zoom in even closer than with the shortcuts, where you
can just place the text insertion point (the flashing vertical bar) and hit Ctrl-Option-Left/Right.

They could be colored lines instead of rectangles - as I would expect that when spacing is adjusted for letters like LT and AV, etc, there would be some space overlap. It could be like you mention in Glyphs where you can drag a letter over itself.
There's a lot to deal with when editing text artistically at least - editing the spacing between individual letters and then the option to edit the spacing between words. This was easier when both features had similar key commands - but for some reason one set got taken away and used for vertical spacing instead in a recent build.
There's always talk about what the proper spacing in those tricky situations is - when one letter overhangs another letter or like the "A". - it would allow for setting "perfect" spacing easier

i was also thinking about it in terms of visually seeing the spacing and also measuring spacing between words and letters - so it would be easy to see what that space is. It could be toggled for example - maybe even bring back the text on path tool that got removed recently and let that be the tool that can click on a letter and move it directly.

Just trying to think of ways to make seemingly clunky tasks easier - especially for the artists

[VectorStyler]

@Boldline Interesting idea, added to the list of features for the future.