Re: Big Bag o' Questions

[Valeriy E. Ushakov]

On Wed, Aug 11, 1999 at 02:01:08PM -0400, Colin Klipsch wrote:

>     all, five of them generate such errors:
> 
>         168  dieresis (umlaut)
>         173  hyphen ("soft" hyphen)
>         175  macron
>         180  acute
>         184  cedilla

The last one is space at 160 (240).  It seems like a bug: when glyph
is mapped more then once in the LCM file, only the first codepoint
could be used.


> (3) I want to propose that a collection of good quality freeware &
>     shareware PostScript fonts be added to Lout, perhaps as a
>     supplemental download package.

This is so extremely easy to add new fonts, that it hardly worth a
separate download package.  Adding them to the base distribution is
not very kosher either.

In fact I would prefer to cut down he list of AFMs distributed with
Lout to be cut down to the base 14 fonts, guaranteed to be present in
all PostScript systems.  At least this will eliminate questions like
"Why my @InitialFont { Palatino Base 12p } produces strangely looking
documents?" because using a nonstandard font will reuqire a conscious
action from a user.



> (4) Along the same lines, I'd like to push for Multiple Master font
>     support, specifically the use of "optical scaling" at different
>     point sizes.
[...]
>     I can imagine that adding this feature would mean major changes to
>     Lout's internal workings.

Exactly.


> (5) It seems that defining new symbols inside the document text is
>     impossible, that they all need to be defined in the "mydefs" file,
>     even those used only over a small scope.  Is this true?

Yes.


>     Is there a way to define a symbol inside a chapter or section?

In some particuar chapter or section - no.  You can "extend" some
specific scope (read: module) with new symbols, though.

Definitions are not allowed when the body of the document begins, and
the body of the document begins (syntactically) after the first
invocation of @Use.  mydefs is included right before that point.


> (6) What's the easiest way to _outdent_ all my section headers?
>     Or perhaps equivalently, to indent all section text?

Use the overlapping trick discussed recently:

  @SectionHeadingFormat { |0io 2f @HShift { number @DotSep title } }

Change 2f to the desired amount of outdent.  You will also want a
wider left margin.



> (7) Here's another feature request, if this isn't already possible...
>     It would be nice to have a text "wrap-around" feature for small
>     figures and tables, perhaps as a new value for the @Location
>     parameter.  The figure (or table) would then be set alongside the
>     current paragraph -- hugging either the left or right margin
>     according to the user's choice -- with the text wrapping around
>     it.  I'm referring to something like the DropCap feature, only
>     much more flexible.

Generic flow-around (L-shaped paragraphs) is impossible in Lout, but
one can perhaps adapt @DropCap* symbols to do flowing semi-manually
(one will need to specify the size of the "window").


>     _pdfmark_ operator that Distiller obeys to generate hypertext
>     links, bookmarks, and so on:

At the bottom of "whatsnew" file:

| Things that ought to be done but haven't been done yet
|    
|     pfmark in PostScript output



SY, Uwe
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