Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!frigga.claremont.edu
From: dhosek@frigga.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Bigletter macros and mortising
Message-ID: <8319@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: 7 Sep 90 18:25:58 GMT
Sender: news@jarthur.Claremont.EDU
Reply-To: dhosek@frigga.claremont.edu
Organization: Quixote
Lines: 46

In article <1990Sep7.074335.9271@metro.ucc.su.OZ.AU>, glenn@suphys.physics.su.OZ.AU writes...
>Decorative initial letter macros are great. Does anyone have one that can 
>mortise type?

>e.g.,

>  /\ NOTHER macro to produce this mortised effect would be very nice. I don't 
> /--\  know whether it is simple to do in TeX or not. One would have to do 
>/    \  something with the font metrics in order to get it right I think. Of 
>course each letter could be treated differently using \if. Is there an 
>easier way?

No, the only way to handle mortising is with a \if selection.
Fortunately, the affected letters are few (I am of the school
that in dropped caps, only the first line should be mortised,
which means the only letters affected are A and L. One third the
width of the A and two-thirds the width of the L work
sufficiently well.

++++
|--
|or a raised cap, mortising is somewhat more difficult since the
number of letters affected is greater (F, P, T, V, W and Y), but
again, some experimentally determined fractions work well. (One
of my books on typography in a discussion on this sort of thing
gives directions on cutting the lead type). 

My macro for a two line dropped cap with mortising is in
[anonymous.tex.inputs.local]clinicsheet.sty on ymir.claremont.edu

A few other tips on dropped caps: align the cap with either the
bottom of the lowest line it touches or the tops of the letters
of the first line (my preference is for the former) or both. The
initial should usually be in the same font as the surrounding
text, although there are some cases where another face will work
(one that looks very nice is a Lombardic capital with sans-serif
type).

-dh

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