Re: [Groff] holistic widow elimination

[Ted Harding]

On 08-Jan-2012 Deri James wrote:
> On Saturday 07 Jan 2012 22:59:46 Ted Harding wrote:
>> Just a few somewhat random thoughts. I've been through this
>> sort of thing too often for it to be easy or quick to summarise!
> 
> I remember reading (on this list) a PHD thesis by Han The Thanh
> (of pdfTEX fame) on micro typography, although the original is
> now a dead link I think I've found it here:-
> 
> http://www.pragma-ade.com/pdftex/thesis.pdf
> 
> Many thought provoking ideas.
> 
> Cheers 
> Deri

Thanks for updating the link, Deri. Yes, I remember reading
this too, at the time, and also getting a lot of ideas.

For example, I define characters like

.char \[.>] \Z'.'
.char \[,>] \Z','
.char \[;>] \Z';'
.char \[:>] \Z':'
.char \[rq>] \Z'\[rq]'
.char \[qr>] \Z'\[qr]'
.char \[!>] \Z'!'
.char \[lq<] \Z'\h'-\w'\[lq]'u'\[lq]'
.char \[ql<] \Z'\h'-\w'\[lq]'u'\[ql]'
.char \[T<] \h'-0.300n'T

for use at the ends and beginnings of lines. Note the "\[T<]",
which, at the beginning of the line, gives a more pleasing
alignment of "T" with the character[s] above and/or below,
since the "visual impact" of "T" comes more from its vertical
central bar than from its horizontal top bar. The "-0.300n'"
may depend on which font you are using -- and nothing stops
you from using \h'-\n[bsp]u', where \n[bsp] can be defined
as \n[bspTR] or \n[bspBMB] or ... for fonts TimesRoman,
BookmanBold, ... .

For hyphenation it is more tricky, when inevitable. What I do
there (when in a context where I do this "microtypography"),
is to precede the first word in the line which to be output
by:

.ll +\w'\[hy]'u'

(this can occur anywhere in the source for the preceding line).
Then the "-" overhangs the right-hand end of the line by the
right amount. Then reset it with

.ll

(which can occur anywhere in the source for the line with
the hyphen).

And so on -- one can invent any amount of such things, and
the thesis in question gives a lot of ideas).

Ted.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
Date: 08-Jan-2012
Time: 01:55:30

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