Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Path: utzoo!sq!lee
From: lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin)
Subject: Re: Bigletter macros and mortising
Message-ID: <1990Sep14.195417.13495@sq.sq.com>
Organization: SoftQuad Inc.
References: <8319@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 90 19:54:17 GMT
Lines: 33

>glenn@suphys.physics.su.OZ.AU writes...
>>Decorative initial letter macros are great. Does anyone have one that can 
>>mortise type?
dhosek@frigga.claremont.edu writes:

>No, the only way to handle mortising is with a \if selection.
Well, Don Hosek is usually right about TeX things... but in this case, I'm
not sure.  With kerning versions of troff at least, you can do better.

/=====/
   |
   |  he letters that stick up are easy:  Suppose the cap-height of the
normal-sized letters is comparable to a lower-case `e' in the larger size.
Then all we do is find the difference between
    the width of ``Te''
    the width ot `T' plus the width of `e'
(in other words, the kern for Te).  This is how much closer to move the
"he" to the "T" in the beginning "The" on the first line.

For letters that stick down, kern against a T instead, since the first line
of text will behave like the cross-bar of a T.  (If the difference in size is
smaller, kern against W).

This works quite well in practice, even if it sounds strange, and doesn't
require special cases for each (letter, font) combination.

Lee

-- 
Liam R. E. Quin,  lee@sq.com, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, +1 (416) 963-8337
[Granny weatherwax] was opposed to books on strict moral grounds, since she
had heard that many of them were written by dead people  and therefore it
stod to reason reading them would be as bad as necromancy.  [Equal Rites 118]
