TeX "glue" (stretch and shrink)

Gordon Haverland ghaverla at materialisations.com
Sat Oct 5 02:42:54 CEST 2019


On Fri, 4 Oct 2019 14:57:19 +0100
Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:

> Quite true. I haven't looked at the differences, as it's a face I
> rarely use, but at 60' × 12" × 72.27 = 52,034.4pt they might be
> tangible.

What I did, was to stake out the discontinuities on the ground.  For a
letter like "L", this has lots of discontinuities.

Time for some ASCII art

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The dashes and pipes are what I "carved" into the ground with a
rototiller.  The rototiller did not break up the 40 year old fescue
sod, all it did was dig grooves into the fescue.  Whatever the
font/typeface I used, I forgot to put in the X part.  So, I am trying
to do that after the fact.

Rototilling the "O" was harder, in that there are no discontinuities.
The inner and outer edges of the "O" are not circular, it is narrower
than it is tall.  I just tried to draw a smooth curve (with a
rototiller).  Nominally, the "letters" are about 6 feet thick.

Is the E something which is identify-able?

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While I call it a fescue sod (pasture), there is alfalfa, red clover,
white clover and alsike clover in it (from the initial seeding).  There
is some kind of vetch widely spread through the pasture now.  And other
plants (probably called weeds) are spotty.  

What I tried to seed into these "grooves" was crimson clover, which is
an annual clover.  Deep red blossums.  The germination of the crimson
clover was poor, and it didn't self seed worth a darn.

In many (most?) places, where I "dug" these grooves with the
rototiller, clover from the initial seeding has come back stronger.

I think I am going to have to plant something else to make these
letters stand out.    There are lots of yellow flowers, but I think
there are too many things which can produce poor contrast for yellow on
green.  A person can get lupin in particular colours, but the only
lupin I seem to find here is "Russel", which is a multicolor thing.
I'll probably have to get some mailorder.  I am going to guess that a
red or a purple blossum is probably what I am looking for.

Gord




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