[XeTeX] asterism

[teginch at bluewin.ch]

By triggering the asterism thread originally, I had more modest requirements. Basically to use it in the way it is 
often used in books, namely as a paragraph separator, neither the searchability (you can always search for asterisks in 
pdf), nor the impact on line spacing is so much of an issue, at least at my XeTeX skill level. Anyway, the thread 
remains very interesting and I have a working solution. 



Tom

-------

"How vain is it to sit down to write, if you have not stood up to live." H.D. Thoreau





>----Message d'origine----

>De: pomax at nihongoresources.com

>Date: 17.01.2010 22:31

>À: "Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms"<xetex at tug.org>

>Objet: Re: [XeTeX] asterism

>

>Khaled,

>> Editing fonts isn't usually that easy, legally and technically, and

>> waiting for some commercial fonts to fix bugs or add new glyphs can take

>> ages, if it ever happens. TeX is a powerful engine and can sometimes do

>> what is otherwise almost impossible (I don't know any other typesetting

>> system that would allow me to move glyphs in the two dimensions freely),

>> and shouldn't be afraid to make use of it, even TeX's logo demonstrate

>> this :)

>

>Yeah, I know, just musing about the stylistic vs. text interpretation of 

>the solution in this thread. As a stylistic marker (like a bullet or a 

>fleuron) the compound command solution is quite nice, and paired with 

>\ActualText it's even a functional text solution. However, if the 

>generalised solution starts to involve a necessity to manipulate the 

>vertical spacing of the compound based on the asterisk's glyph metrics, 

>which will be different depending on the font used (unlike the TeX logo, 

>which is really only "correct" in Computer Modern, and "accidentally 

>correct" for fonts with identical glyph metrics for the letters T, E and 

>X) then the usefulness of the solution for other people who might run 

>into this problem in the future might become an issue =)

>

>Just thinking out loud.

>

>- Mike

>

>

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