[arrrg]

I was just giving a historic explanation as to why no one might have thought of that. (By the way, good modern fonts actually do a lot in terms of automatically adjusting the spacing of individual letters, and popular layout tools like InDesign offer algorithmic alternatives to whatever the font comes with by default. In proportional fonts “Te” will typically be closer together than “Th” – if you output those fonts with the right program. So fudging with spacing in some automated fashion is not out of the question.)

However, even in code it is desirable to not add extra space to parenthesis, since “foo (bar” is certainly no less common than “foo(bar”. Basically, the font would have to automatically adjust depending on whether or not a space is in front of it to treat both of those cases appropriately. (I think that’s possible with current font formats, so there is likely no technological hurdle to this.) However, that might not be desirable since it might make “foo (bar” and “foo(bar” easier to confuse.