How to force text condensation

Question

I have a title, that's written in font family with no condensed face. But I still want to bring letters closer to each other due to typographical reason.

I find couple of ways to change letterspacing:

1. Use a soulutf8 package:

   \sodef\cond{}{.01em}{.01em}{.01em}
   

2. Use fontenc and redefine font parameters:

   \newfontfamily\headingfontcond[LetterSpace=.01]{MyFont-Bold}
   

Both of this ways works if letter space is greater than one. But if I try to make text narrower, but not wider, it just doesn't change anything.

BTW, I unable to use microtype package because I render text with XeLaTeX.

Answer 1

LetterSpace works also with negative values:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX]{Alegreya}
\newfontface{\titlingfont}[LetterSpace=-10]{Alegreya Bold}

\begin{document}
{\Large\titlingfont A HIDEOUS TITLE}

\Large\bfseries A HIDEOUS TITLE
\end{document}

You can also use \scalebox from graphicx:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX]{Alegreya}
\newfontface{\titlingfont}[LetterSpace=-10]{Alegreya Bold}

\begin{document}
{\Large\titlingfont A HIDEOUS TITLE\par}

\scalebox{0.85}[1]{\Large\bfseries A HIDEOUS TITLE}
\end{document}

Answer 2

The letter spacing is very bad typographical practice. I recommend to use slightly linear deformation in the wide.

The LaTeX was not specified as necessary in this question, so I use the plainTeX solution. Of course, XeTeX is used as you wish.

\input opmac

\def\titlefont{\typosize[20/25]\bf}

\def\narrowerto #1\hbox#2{\hbox{\pdfsave
   \pdfscale{#1}{1}\rlap{#2}\pdfrestore}}

\hbox{\titlefont This is text}
\bigskip
\narrowerto 0.95 \hbox{\titlefont This is text}

\end

You can try to run xetex document.

But if you exactly need to use this bad typographical practice then you can try the following code:

\input opmac

\def\letterspaced #1 #2{\def\tmpb{#2}%
   \replacestrings{ }{\ }\replacestrings{}{\kern#1}\tmpb}

\def\titlefont{\typosize[20/25]\bf}

{\titlefont \letterspaced -1pt {This is text}}

\end

You can try to run xetex document.

Answer 3

If it is just a one-off title, and you are sure you want to do this, just position it all manually (which you should do anyway if you are hand lettering a title)

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\huge
       This

       T\hspace{-.09em}h\hspace{-.05em}i\hspace{-.06em}s

\end{document}