julian@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Julian Cowley) (12/10/89)
Simple question of the week---does TeX have an intercharacter glue that can be set when TeX is running (i.e., without twiddling TFM files)? This is question is posed primarily for curiosity, as I've seen newspapers that space out characters a little more than normal when there is a bad break in the text. I gather the answer is no, since it's not listed in the index of the TeXbook. julian@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu julian@uhccux.bitnet
dhosek@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (D.A. Hosek) (12/10/89)
In article <5674@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> julian@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Julian Cowley) writes: >Simple question of the week---does TeX have an intercharacter >glue that can be set when TeX is running (i.e., without twiddling >TFM files)? This is question is posed primarily for curiosity, >as I've seen newspapers that space out characters a little more >than normal when there is a bad break in the text. I gather the >answer is no, since it's not listed in the index of the TeXbook. Your gatheration (neat word, eh) is correct. TeX will not automatically insert glue between letters. It is possible to do this through the use of macros, although it is an unpleasant task (a macro for this was developed at United Bible Societies for typesetting Thai which frequently has rather long words) and not really automatable. There is a great deal of debate over the aesthetics of letterspacing of this type, with most people feeling that it's ugly. Personally, I think it looks better than occasionally having a too-short line, but it's a point that's debatable. -dh -- "Odi et amo, quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior" -Catullus D.A. Hosek. UUCP: uunet!jarthur!dhosek Internet: dhosek@hmcvax.claremont.edu
macrakis@marat.osf.fr (Stavros Macrakis) (12/16/89)
Note that in Arabic-script typesetting, the standard way to fill out a line is with longer connectors between the letters, and not with more space between words. The longer connector is typically between the last two letters of the last word of the line, but sometimes (in formulae such as "b-ismi l-laahi r-rahmaani r-rahiim" after the first letter. And you can get more complicated than that. -s