[texhax] normal mode to caps lock mode

[Uwe Lück]

At 11:55 06.11.06, Susan Dittmar wrote:
>Quoting HRE (hres):
> > How can I convert a normal mode sentence to caps lock mode sentence.
>
>Alternatively you can use \textsc{this is my first document}. The 'sc'
>stands for small capitals. As you want a whole sentence uppercase, these
>smaller capitcals might look better than a simply using the capitals of the
>normal font size.

See also UK TeX FAQ:

     http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=casechange

Mere Caps are difficult to read, at least when there are more then
two such words in a line. -- They also typically need letterspacing.
Google for the latter; and there are packages by Philipp Taylor,
by Alexander Rozhenko

     CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/ncctools/doc/nccstretch.pdf

(which I find better because what you really need is not a certain
width, rather the amount of extra spaces between letters matters),
and by myself which I like most, -- it mixes fixed extra spaces
with the implicit kerns from the font -- not published yet for reasons
of time and other duties.

UK TeX FAQ:

     http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=letterspace

With Knuth TeX a bad thing is that tokens or characters
(or groups) rather than the glyphs are moved apart;
I've read that Omega does better (or once might do better).

I thought Small Caps are outfashioned. The only application
I know of are epigraph authors or other celebrated authors
within respectful surveys or so, until 50 years ago or so.
Jan Tschichold recommended to use as few as possible
different font shapes within a document. -- See a few
words by Barbara Beeton on small caps on p. 44 of

     CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/tugboat/tugboat.pdf

The TUGboat \acro chooses a compromise for acronyms
in running text -- without changing the font shape!

Cheers,

Uwe.