Hi, There are a couple of new features in the next version of pdftex. One of them is the ability to automatically add a kern before punctuation, which is important for french. So ... we can get rid of active : ; ! and ? characters which is a good thing. I'll upload a version that supports this. The handling is called prespacing and the values are experimental. A test could look like: \definefontsynonym[myfont][Serif][handling=prespacing] \definefont[whatever][myfont sa 1] \setupalign[spacing] % nospacing \whatever look at this: we now have a proper spacing feature and, hurray, get rid of active punctuation! but for document wide behaviour one should apply handling at the typeface level. You can turn it on/off with the setupalign command (or the align=... k/v in other commands) A windows test binary can be found at: http://pdftex.sarovar.org/djgpp/ just move the exe and pool file to the right place and make a format. Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------