I checked out the specs and they looked good so I uninstalled the unlovely Open Office and installed Libre Office (under XP). Only to find that the Libre Office writer hasn’t got a clue about kerning, even with properly kerned fonts and the “Character” option for it turned on. Its kerning is not just BAD, it’s GROTESQUELY BAD. Even WordPad does a better job - a FAR better job. Someone must have noticed, but - if not - is this going to be fixed sometime soon or will it need a bye-bye Libre Office and a reinstall of Open Office to get half-decent kerning?
While I agree with the answer @tohuwawohu 2012-07-19 11:30:02 there are many factors that contribute to kerning. Exposure of the various font (OpenType/AAPT/Graphite2) APIs is a large issue. It would help if you could provide an example (font in use and version, sample ODT, and screenshot).
There are already different bug reports concerning kerning issues. If no one fits your problem, feel free to add another bug report.
This issue still seems to exist, but you can sort of lessen the issue by doing this: Select all text, right-click and pick Character. Go to the Position tab and disable Pair kerning. For some reason, the kerning gets better if you turn this off (at least, for me it does).
You’re freely provided version of Libre fails to kern to your professional publishing standards, since Kerning is a key aspect of commercial sign / poster and flier publishing -hopefully an activity you’re engaging in since academic and business recipients of your Libre documents would focused on your documents content instead of letter spacing.
You’re more than welcome to fulfill your threat of reinstalling your older, freely provided version of Open Office for creating your commercial deliverables ( you are b e in g pa i d to kern output, right?)
Those crazy Adobe people offer inDesign, a commercial but slightly more expensive than the freely pro v ided packages you’ve beenc ompar ing for your review and kern to your contentment.
You Wa…, forget it.
For someone with a username of @AnswersNOTAdmonishments it is rather sad that your answer is not even an answer. But then again it can’t be can it? As I point out in a comment beneath the question, the question is not really a question. Simply stating “Waah, X is bad, when are you gonna fix it?” is nigh useless and contributes little, if anything. When a specific question is asked, those that help out here, usually try to provide a specific answer. Kerning involves many factors. Pick one.
“academic and business recipients of your Libre documents would focused on your documents content instead of letter spacing.”
It’s so easy to spot someone who’s never been in academia or business. Good luck getting a document published in either sectors with bad formatting.