simoncozens
commented
2 months ago I know Noto Serif isn't a mono font, but shouldn't the serifs be positioned the same width apart?
I'll take a look at the details of this font soon, but in general, no, that's not how spacing works. Looking at the overall glyph shape, in and particular the rhythm of stems is more important than the ink-to-ink distance to create a rhythmic pattern of text. (If kerning was just a matter of making serifs equal width apart we could very easily kern automatically. ) I suspect what is happening in many of these examples is that there is apparent overlap so that the stem rhythm can be maintained. See for example Frank Blokland's work on letter models; he explains how serifs can be made inconsistent so that stem rhythm can be made consistent.
Font
NotoSerif[wdth,wght].ttf
Where the font came from, and when
https://github.com/notofonts/latin-greek-cyrillic/releases
Font Version
Noto Serif 2.013
OS name and version
Windows 11
Application name and version
Everything
Issue
I noticed a number of lowercase letter combos that have some issues. Namely: ww yy fb fh fi (with ligatures turned off) fk fl (with ligatures turned off) fv fw fy vi wi yi kz qj qw gv vv vw wv gy qy yy
In this screenshot below, I show the Black weight but I'm sure at least some of the issues probably exist down to Bold. This problem probably also affects capital Latin letters as well as Greek and Cyrillic. Just wanted to post this here before I do the tedious work of the other glyphs.
I also noticed a lot of inconsistency with kerning between many letters. I know Noto Serif isn't a mono font, but shouldn't the serifs be positioned the same width apart? For example, "mmm" has perfectly positioned width between its serifs as expected, but something like "nkn" has a wider space before the k and a smaller space after the k. If this a real issue, then it likely affects all weights.
Screenshot