[comp.text] Printing the first letter of a chapter/article in big size

kalita@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Jugal Kolita) (08/12/89)

Hi!

I wonder if someone has written the programs required to print the
first letter in the beginning of an article or paper in a large font
as they do in many books.
Everything following the first letter of the first word is printed
in normal size and font.
I think they are called  dropcaps or something
similar.
----------------
_____
  |   his is the type of format I want to 
  |   have for some  articles of a
  |   document I am trying to print. The 
rest of the lines will start from the beginning
of the line as these last two lines do.

------------------

If someone has written the program to do so, I will appreciate if
s/he sends me a copy.

Thanks in advance.


Jugal

jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright) (08/13/89)

In article <13654@netnews.upenn.edu> kalita@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Jugal Kolita) writes:
| I wonder if someone has written the programs required to print the
| first letter in the beginning of an article or paper in a large font
| as they do in many books.

A style file called drop.doc was published in TeXhax v88 #16.  It does
just what you want, but finding a good font for the big character isn't
that easy.

-- 
Jim Wright
jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu

chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (08/15/89)

In article <1333@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu
(Jim Wright) writes:
>A style file called drop.doc was published in TeXhax v88 #16.  It does
>just what you want, but finding a good font for the big character isn't
>that easy.

A LaTeX version (drop.sty) is available from the Clarkson style archives.

Not only is it hard to find a good font, some of us find drop capitals
to be a nuisance in general.  They look pretty, but they can often
hamper readability.  (To see what I mean, take a look at a recent issue
or two of Unix/World: the drop capitals are too close to the following
text, leading to something that looks like

	|\   | ow if you thought it was
	| \  | ever possible to `scan'
	|  \ | or `skip' or in some way
	|   \| eat up the . . .

which is supposed to read `Now if ... was ever ... `scan' or `skip'
but---to me, at least---keeps reading `Now if ... was never ... `scan'
nor `skip'....)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris

chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (08/15/89)

In article <19089@mimsy.UUCP> I wrote:
>... some of us find drop capitals to be a nuisance in general. ...
>To see what I mean, take a look at a recent issue or two of Unix/World:

Make that `Unix Review'.  (Somehow I always get these mixed up.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris