You may start worrying if you have 6500 before expanding class kerning.  :)

I think it is rather much, but I dont think you have to worry for that matter. But perhaps you could look over the spacing a little bit, as this large number of kerning pairs could mean that the spacing is not optimized? Or... it could also mean that you really have kerned VERY good :)

agree with Göran, you know what they say, the more kerning pairs you have, the spacing is not good :-)

Who is they? Don’t believe everything anybody said ...  :)

In my reading the question was technical. In this respect, the given number of kerning pairs is really small. (I take for granted that the font is an OTF with a glyph set larger than in old PST1 fonts.)

If the question were about strategy, then of course one better try hard to create almost-perfect spacing so it needs as few kerning as possible.

If the question were about aestetics, then better let the design of the typeface decide, not what anyone said. Some typefaces need more, some need less kerning.

The font in question is an OTF font, I spent an age on the spacing so I hope it is correct. The kerning I did was to correct spacing that couldn’t be achieved without the kerning.

The kerning I did was :

Upper/Upper
Upper/punctuation
Upper/Lower
Lower/Lower (min)
Lower/punctuation
Number/Number
Number/punctuation

I vote with Rachael. Even working over an old, well-fit Type 1 font, I’d get about 2000 pairs. Over half of these involved punctuation. A second observation is that however you set the sidebearings of capitals, either (1) cap-cap needs a lot of kerning, or (2) cap-lowercase needs a lot of kerning.

Over half of these involved punctuation. A second observation is that however you set the sidebearings of capitals, either (1) cap-cap needs a lot of kerning, or (2) cap-lowercase needs a lot of kerning.

Hello Charles, I fully agree with both observations, about punctuation and spacing of capitals.

Best wishes! Karsten