[Tex/LaTex] How to adjust the kerning around a forward slash in text

kerningtypography

In contrast to \texttt{typewriter} normal text is "connected". When using a forward slash, I get for y/. this:

y/.

while I would like to get something like that:

y$!$/$!$.

which can be accomplished by y$\!$/$\!$., but this is brute-force. Is there a better way to tell LaTeX to "connect" the forward slash with the adjacent characters?

(For fractions there is \sfrac of the xfrac package, but I do not want to typeset fractions here.)

MWE:

\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}
y/.

y$\!$/$\!$.
\end{document}

Best Answer

use of \! may be brute force, but that is what is recommended in the texbook (examples, in math, on p.169; for plain tex, \! doesn't work outside of math, so a negative \kern would be needed).

if this tight spacing were always wanted, a font designer could provide kerning pairs between "y" and slash and between slash and period, but i suspect this is unlikely to be popular.

Update:
As reminded by @Stephen, "LaTeX News", Issue 32, TUGboat 41:3 (2020), p.290 announced that all spaces formerly defined in amsmath were moved to the kernel, and are usable in both math and text. These are

\,    \thinspace
\!    \negthinspace
\: \> \medspace
      \negmedspace
\;    \thickspace
      \negthickspace

Adjusting font kerning

If you need to adjust the kerning within a font, the short answers are:

No, not from within TeX.
Yes, if you're willing to create a virtual font.
Yes, if you're able to edit the font with fontforge (OpenType fonts only, for use in XeTeX or LuaTeX).
Yes, if you're using LuaTeX and OpenType fonts; see §11 of the fontspec manual: ‘OpenType font feature files’.

I've only experience in options 1 and 4.

XeTeX's interchartoks

XeTeX offers a feature known as ‘interchartoks’ that allows tokens to be inserted automatically between characters of different ‘class’. This feature was added to facilitate, say, automatic font and language switching between two different scripts (e.g., Japanese to Arabic).

This feature can be used to add kerning between characters, as shown in Philipp's answer. (As well as between !!, you might also choose to adjust spacing around : for French typography, say.) As an example, if this feature is used then when XeTeX comes across !! in the input, it will interpret it as !\exclamkern! instead. Any kerning that happens there will independent of the current font, which is generally not going to be appropriate for changing the kerning between letters. But for very specific use cases this technique is suitable for minor adjustments.

[Tex/LaTex] automatically adjust the vertical alignment of square brackets in text

As David points out in the OP's comments, making the brackets active will break the use of many things, such as optional arguments. So this solution splits the difference. It creates the macros \shftON and \shftOFF to turn the vertically shifted brackets on and off by making them \active or not.

When \shftON is invoked, you can get the brackets you want with the [ and ] characters... and when \shftOFF is invoked, everything reverts to the normal way of doing things. In my MWE, I show this by first demonstrating the \shftON bracket appearances, and then, after turning \shftOFF, I show not only the original brackets in use, but also make use of an optional bracketed argument to show that they are not broken by this technique.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}% ONLY NEEDED FOR \scalebox DEMO
\setbox0=\hbox{0}
\newlength\htz\newlength\dpz
\htz=\ht0\relax
\dpz=\dp0\relax
\let\svlb[
\let\svrb]
\def\shftlb{\setbox0=\hbox{\svlb}\raisebox{%
  \dimexpr-.5\ht0+.5\htz+.5\dp0-.5\dpz}{\svlb}}
\def\shftrb{\setbox0=\hbox{\svrb}\raisebox{%
  \dimexpr-.5\ht0+.5\htz+.5\dp0-.5\dpz}{\svrb}}
\catcode`[=\active
\catcode`]=\active
\def\shftON{%
  \catcode`[=\active
  \catcode`]=\active
  \def[{\shftlb}%
  \def]{\shftrb}%
}
\catcode`[=12
\catcode`]=12
\def\shftOFF{%
  \catcode`[=12
  \catcode`]=12
}
\begin{document}
\shftON
$X [10] g$\par\textsf{X [10] g}\par\texttt{X [10] g}\par\textrm{X [10] g}
\shftOFF
Revert: \textrm{X [10] g} \scalebox{.35}[.75]{Optional Argument used}
\end{document}

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Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] way to adjust kerning for a specific character combination

Adjusting font kerning

XeTeX's interchartoks

[Tex/LaTex] automatically adjust the vertical alignment of square brackets in text

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