How to change the spacing between letters in a NSFont?

Question

I'm trying to change the letter spacing in a NSFont (such as Gill Sans). Is this possible or will I need to load my own custom font?

Answer 1

Though I suppose fonts might specify some kerning hints, kerning is really an attribute of rendered text. So the answer to your question depends on how you're going to render your text to the screen.

If you're using NSAttributedString, you can look at the NSKernAttributeName attribute (see the Constants section in the documentation. If you're using CoreText and CFAttributedString, you can look at the kCTKernAttributeName attribute (see the Constants section in the documentation.

If you're using something else to render text, then the answer (if there is one; not all text rendering methods support advanced customization) will be dependent on that something else.