[XeTeX] Typographical question: xetex' default wordspacing (\fontdimen2--7)

Will Robertson wspr81 at gmail.com
Sun Jun 25 08:47:21 CEST 2006


On 25/06/2006, at 14:41 , Toralf Senger wrote:

>> | \comment{The remaining code in this section sets various metric
>> | parameters for the font. Ideally, all these parameters should  
>> already
>> | have been set; the values computed here are merely crude guesses
>> | about what might be the right value.}
>
> Interesting! So who sets those parameters IDEALLY? And based on  
> what reasoning?

The font designer should chose those parameters based on how they  
intend their font to be used. Since TeX is fairly sophisticated with  
its stretch and shrink, however, a fixed proportion of the width of a  
space character (which has also been designed along with the font)  
will give good results most of the time.

> So I think one could TeX at least give the chance to typeset a  
> document beautifully

:) I agree. It's much better to teach users how to deal with bad  
boxes (\begin{sloppypar}, etc.). A mechanism to warn of underfull  
boxes in a paragraph would be nice, though.

Will


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