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Washington Cyrillic
*** The Washington Cyrillic quandry worsens ***
> Now I am trying to use [the WNCY Cyrillic fonts] and it almost works.
> But not quite. Here is a typical problem I encounter.
> The letter pair <t><s> *and* the single
> letter <ts> both occur in Russian, and must not be confused. After
> trying I believe I can typeset only one correctly:
>
> --- To get the single glyph <ts> I can indeed key an active
> character. And there is no problem with hyphenation. So far so good.
>
> --- BUT, to get the letter pair <t><s>, I cannot key <t><s> since a
> ligature converts it to <ts>. The obvious TeX tricks to prevent the
> ligature do not really work: I cannot type <t>{}<s> since that loses
> me the non-zero negative kern between <t> and <s>. Hyphenation there
> is however is OK.
Alas, as Knuth indicates in the TeXbook (answer to the first exercise in
Chapter 5), this plausible solution is a boobytrap, indeed:
<t>{}<s> fails to inhibit the ligaturing precisely when the hyphenation
mechanism is really exercised. Knuth then suggests introducing a (zero)
kern, say by:
<t>\kern0pt <s>
Alas again! --- this just rolls us from frying pan into the fire!
Indeed hyphenation is thereby inhibited throughout the word!!
Barbara's reply anticipates this quandry, suggesting a trick well known
>From its use in German.sty; this trick *partially* restores the
hyphenation we have just lost.
<t>\-\kern0pt\penalty10000\hskip0pt <s>
As she says, one can try dropping the discretionary break \-.
Thus with Barbara's help we still suffer (probably slightly)
damaged hyphenation and (definitely and totally) lost kerning. So my
original problem is today more unsolved than I said yesterday:
> Any solutions to type the letter pair <t><s> without spoiling the
> typography?
Now that the situation is in better in focus, I recall
that Omega does fix these problems. And what about eTeX?
Larry Siebenmann