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I'm using a software that has a very annoying auto-reduce-spacing feature, so that all the characters are close each other, that is highly unreadable.

I can't change the spacing, but I can change the Font, so my question is do exist any font with a default spacing bigger than normal?

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I hope this is not too obvious an answer, but the first response I considered was fixed width fonts such as courier. If course, there is no kerning to consider. Certainly, Kerning is the keyword you are looking for, which is the space between the letters.

Other than this, is it possible for you to adjust kerning in the application or an external application. I am thinking you can import the text as another format (say an image).

You may do this in Photoshop in the following way.

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  • I already tried fixed width fonts, the kerning is still too small. What do you mean by "importing the text as another format"? – alessiop86 Sep 22 '12 at 18:48
  • There are a number of ways, but the immediate one that sprung to mind was when I convert text into paths and vectors within Adobe Illustration and then place them into other programmes (like Photoshop) as images in their own right. It restricts editing once in the target app, but you have control right up until the final export. What is the package you are using and what are you trying to achieve? Can you throw a screenshot to say, Imageshack and a few lines of text here describing your intent. – MarcusB Sep 22 '12 at 18:58
  • I figured it out using a font tool, thanks for the hint about Kerning – alessiop86 Sep 23 '12 at 19:52
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    Just to let you know, kerning is not the word for this. Kerning is tracking adjustments made to individual letter pairs based on the shape of those letters, for instance nudging the letters "AY" closer together so the tail of the Y is vertically above part of the A. "Tracking" or "letter spacing" is the term you are looking for. – thomasrutter Sep 24 '12 at 0:58
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You haven't mentioned what software it is. If it is doing "auto kerning" and you can't turn that off, then it doesn't sound like any change to the font will help, since any added bearings in the font will probably be cancelled out again by the software. So your first priority would be to try and get whatever software it is, to try and disable that feature or adjust your "tracking" or "letter spacing".

FontForge (free font editor) allows you to adjust the width of letter spacing in a font by selecting all desired characters, going to "Metrics" -> "Set Width" -> "Increment width by..." but it may not be as simple as that (it may affect placement of combining accents?). I guess it's a route for experimentation.

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