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Re: [Groff] space width


From: Clarke Echols
Subject: Re: [Groff] space width
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 23:02:54 -0700
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:16.0) Gecko/20121011 Thunderbird/16.0.1

Thanks for the tip.  I think that's exactly what I need, given the
situations where I usually encounter the need.

Clarke

On 01/25/2014 08:43 PM, Dave Kemper wrote:
There are some situations where I'd like to be able to adjust spacing
between letters (mainly in titles and headlines for commercial copy)
for special effects.  I suppose I could force it by putting \h'...'
between characters, but that's a pain.

I use .tkf for this.  The description for this request is a little
misleading: "the width of every glyph is increased by an amount between
N1 and N2" makes it sound like the glyphs are stretched horizontally.
In fact, .tkf merely adds space after each glyph.

I think it's a poorly implemented request.  Since the documentation states
one of the problems -- "the track kerning amount is added even to the
rightmost glyph in a line" -- I suppose this can't technically be called
a bug, but there would seem to be almost no situations where this would
be desired behavior.  And the suggested workaround -- "increase the line
length by the same amount to compensate it" -- is unworkable for a number
of reasons.  (Two reasons are that "the same amount," in the general
case, requires a ponderous calculation to determine; and that using .ll
to change the line length doesn't even take effect until the next line.)

I suspect this request was implemented with the idea that it would only
be used to make small enough adjustments that the extra space at  the
end of the line wouldn't be easily noticeable, but I can think of no
good reason why this request should produce that extra space at all.

For titles and headlines, this likely isn't a concern, so it may suit
your purposes.





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