[Fontinst] letterspacing

[Adrian Heathcote]

Hi Olli

You probably already know this but letterspacing/tracking is dealt with  
in Alan Hoenig's book, p. 259ff. He has some good advice on suppressing  
ligatures with tracked fonts.

But I'm curious too: I've never heard this advice that footnotes should  
be letterspaced. (It isn't in Bringhurst's book, for example.) Is this  
peculiar to the German typographic tradition? What is the reference for  
it? (I know that emphasis is sometimes created by letterspacing in  
German books.)

Cheers

Adrian Heathcote

On Tuesday, December 31, 2002, at 06:11  AM, Oliver Heins wrote:

> I have to questions concerning letterspacing.
>
> 1. I want to space out the letters of a small font (the one I use for
> footnotes) as it's adviced in many typographic books.  AFAIK this is  
> not
> possibly inside of TeX, and I have to produce a virtual font for this.
>
>> From what I've read, it seems to be possibly to do so with fontinst by
> setting the variable letterspace in the encoding (.etx) file.  I tried,
> but it didn't work.
>
> In the file 8r-olli.etx (which is a copy of 8r.etx) I added a line
> "\setint{letterspacing}{150}" just after the "\encoding".
>
> ,----
> | [...]
> |
> | \encoding
> |
> | \needsfontinstversion{1.909}
> |
> | \setint{letterspacing}{1pt}
> |
> | [...]
> `----
>
> I use the 8r-olli.etx within the following script[1], here shortened to
> do only the roman font (flir8a is a font containing just the
> ff-ligatures):
>
> ,----
> | \input fontinst.sty
> |
> | \installfonts
> | \installfamily{T1}{pegx}{}
> | \installfamily{TS1}{pegx}{}
> | \installfamily{OT1}{pegx}{}
> |
> | \installfamily{T1}{pegj}{}
> | \installfamily{TS1}{pegj}{}
> | \installfamily{OT1}{pegj}{}
> |
> | \transformfont{pegr8r}{\reencodefont{8r-olli}{\fromafm{pegr8a}}}
> | \transformfont{flir8r}{\reencodefont{8r-olli}{\fromafm{flir8a}}}
> | \installrawfont{pegr8r}{pegr8r,8r}{8r-olli}{8r-olli}{}{}{}{}
> | \installrawfont{flir8r}{flir8r,8r}{8r-olli}{8r-olli}{}{}{}{}
> |
> | % OsF digits
> |
> |  
> \installfont{pegr9d}{pegr8r,unsetnum,kernoff,flir8r,pegrc8r,kernon,lati 
> n}{t1}
> |   {T1}{pegj}{m}{n}{}
> |  
> \installfont{pegr9c}{pegr8r,unsetnum,kernoff,flir8r,pegrc8r,kernon,text 
> comp}{ts1}
> |   {TS1}{pegj}{m}{n}{}
> |  
> \installfont{pegr9o}{pegr8r,unsetnum,kernoff,flir8r,pegrc8r,kernon,lati 
> n}{ot1}
> |   {OT1}{pegj}{m}{n}{}
> |
> | \installfont{pegrc9d}{pegrc8r,latin}{T1}
> |   {T1}{pegj}{m}{sc}{}
> | \installfont{pegrc9o}{pegrc8r,latin}{ot1}
> |   {OT1}{pegj}{m}{sc}{}
> |
> | % normal digits
> |
> | \installfont{pegr9e}{pegr8r,kernoff,flir8r,kernon,latin}{t1}
> |   {T1}{pegx}{m}{n}{}
> | \installfont{pegr9t}{pegr8r,kernoff,flir8r,kernon,latin}{ot1}
> |   {OT1}{pegx}{m}{n}{}
> |
> |  
> \installfont{pegrc9e}{pegrc8r,unsetnum,kernoff,pegr8r,kernon,latin}{t1}
> |   {T1}{pegx}{m}{sc}{}
> |  
> \installfont{pegrc9t}{pegrc8r,unsetnum,kernoff,pegr8r,kernon,latin}{ot1 
> }
> |   {OT1}{pegx}{m}{sc}{}
> |
> | \installfontas{pegr9c}
> |   {TS1}{pegx}{m}{n}{}
> |
> | \endinstallfonts
> | \bye
> `----
>
> The font is the same as I would use the original 8r.etx, the letter
> spacing isn't wider.
>
>
> 2. How should I name such a font?  Karl Berry writes in his "Filenames
> for fonts":
>
> ,----
> | The letterspacing possibilities introduced by fontinst and virtual  
> fonts
> | have not yet become sufficiently widespread to make standardization
> | beneficial.
> `----
>
>
> TIA,
> olli
>
>
> Footnotes:
> [1]  Thanks to Walter Schmidt
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