Re: [Groff] The quest for a high-end typesetting system: A fewquestions

[Peter Schaffter]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2005, Mats Broberg wrote:
> Yes, automatically hanging of punctuation and certain other characters
> in left and right margin would be very nice indeed. In pdfTeX one can
> set the degree of protrusion character per character.

I'm wondering if anyone on the list has suggestions for how
automatic hanging punctuation could be implemented in macro space.

> > I'm not sure what you mean by "multiple" series [of footnotes]
> 
> E.g. like this: http://www.typographica.nl/pdf/Conduct.pdf

Beautiful example.

I don't know of any macro set that handles linenumber references and
footnotes in the way shown.  At a quick glance, though, I'm certain
it's possible (except, possibly, for references that span lines, as
in "3 -4").

> > SHIM simply inserts the amount of space required to make 
> > certain that your next line of text falls on a "legal" 
> > baseline, i.e. on a baseline grid.
> 
> OK, but does that mean that it is only the space _after_ e.g. a block
> quote (that has smaller linespacing than the main text) in the middle of
> the page that is increased? There is no way to distribute the space
> evenly both above and below the block quote?

The SHIM macro is currently intended for use _after_ something
non-standard (i.e. not normal running text).

Mom has its own mechanism to deal specifically with the automatic
distribution of space above and below quotes.  It isn't as flexible
as I'd like, though no one's complained.  I intend to rewrite it.
Once that's done, it should be an easy matter to apply the same
balancing algorithm to a macro designed to output any non-standard
page item.

> > The mom DROPCAP macro allows almost all the tweaks you want, 
> > except sloping indents and protruding serifs.
> 
> I suppose protruding serifs in a drop cap share the same type of
> complexity as protruding characters in any kind of margin have?

Indeed.  AFAIK, groff can't measure the width of serifs.  Besides,
IMO, adjusting a dropcap for protruding serifs isn't a science; it's
a complex judgment call.

> > I don't believe groff can do this [PMS solid spot colors], but
> > someone else may know better, or have a workaround.
> 
> One can always output the spot color as e.g. 100 % cyan and tell the
> printer that cyan should be printed with e.g. PMS 193.

That's how I'd do it.  Not very elegant, though.

> OK, what I was hoping was that the "penalty" to leave a footnote
> reference on one page and move the footnote to the next was greater than
> hanging some pages.

One of the overriding concerns in the mom macros is ensuring that
no pages hang, hence the penalty is to move the footnote of a
footnote reference that occurs too close to the bottom of the page
over to the next page.

Maybe I should create some hell for myself and offer users the
choice of penalty strategy? :)

> 1: Language, how is that handled? Different languages need different
> hyphenation files.

Language-specific hyphenation is not implemented as a mom macro.
The groff request, .hla <language>, is how to do it.

You have to have a hyphenation pattern file for the requested
language.  Groff ships with US English only, but, as I understand
it, the format of hyphenation files is identical to those used
by TeX, so you should be able to grab what you need off the Web.

Werner is certain to know more about this than I.

> 2: Is it possible to switch off e.g. page headers, page footers and
> pagination on certain types of pages - most often pages where new
> chapters start, ends etc?

Yes.

> 3: From your mom docs: "In order to ensure even bottom margins, mom uses
> the "base" document leading in effect at the start of running text on
> each page (i.e. the leading used in paragraphs) to calculate the spacing
> of every document element" How? Does this mean mom stretches space
> between lines and/or paras?

By default, mom stretches the space between lines, not paras, by
just enough to ensure that the last line falls exactly where you
expect.  For example, mom's docprocessing defaults use a nominal
leading of 16 pts, which, after taking into account the real image
area of running text, gets stretched to 16 pts + 158 machine units
(the typical value of a machine unit for the PostScript device is
1/1000 of a point), ergo 16.158 pts.

While this is the default behaviour, it can be switched off so that
a base leading of 16 pts stays at 16 pts. 
 
> 4: From your mom docs, again: "Note that mom does not provide "orphan
> control" for paragraphs" If not, how do you control orphans and widows?
> By using one of the constructs that have been mentioned on the list?
> .ne, .wdc etc?

Yes, you have to use something like .ne.  I thought long and hard
about the issue of orphans, widows, etc. before releasing mom, and
came to the conclusion that no "automated" strategy is perfect.
Unless or until groff has a "paragraph" algorithm, I believe that
the avoidance of widows/orphans, in quality typesetting, should be
under the manual control of the user.

I'm not sure what the state of the .wdc request is (i.e. if it's
been fully tested and is stable).  If anyone has experience with
it, could they let me know?

-- 
Peter Schaffter
  Author of _The Schumann Proof_ (RendezVous Press, Canada)
  http://www.golden.net/~ptpi/theschumannproof.html