MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-FLASH, Use Manual

Page: 168 / 678

168 Working with Text
Setting letter spacing, kerning, and character position
Letter spacing inserts a uniform amount of space between characters. You use letter spacing to
adjust the spacing of selected characters or entire blocks of text.
Kerning controls the spacing between pairs of characters. Many fonts have built-in kerning
information. For example, the spacing between an
A and a V is often less than the spacing
between an A and a D . To use a font’s built-in kerning information to space characters, you
use the Kern option.
For horizontal text, tracking and kerning set the horizontal distance between characters. For
vertical text, tracking and kerning set the vertical distance between characters.
For vertical text, you can set kerning to be off by default in Flash Preferences. When kerning is
turned off for vertical text in Preferences, you can leave the option selected in the Property
inspector, and kerning will be applied to horizontal text only. To set preferences for vertical
text, see
“Creating text” on page 162 .
Using the Property inspector, you can also apply superscript or subscript styles to your text.
To set letter spacing, kerning, and character position:
1.
Select the Text tool.
2.
To apply settings to existing text, use the Text tool to select a text block or text blocks
on the Stage.
3. If the Property inspector is not already displayed, select Window > Properties .
4.
In the Property inspector, set the following options:
■
To specify letter spacing, click the triangle next to the Letter Spacing value and drag
the slider to select a value, or enter a value in the text box.
■
To use a font’s built-in kerning information, select Kern.
■
To specify character position, click the triangle next to the Character Position option
and select a position from the menu: Normal places text on the baseline, Superscript
places text above the baseline (horizontal text) or to the right of the baseline (vertical
text), and Subscript places text below the baseline (horizontal text) or to the left of the
baseline (vertical text).