[luatex] Modifying protrusion default.

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2013-08-24 at 11:29:16 -0400, john Culleton wrote:

 > I am building a template file series for writers of novels etc. One
 > of the strong reasons for using luatex as opposed to other DTP
 > programs is the availability of punctuation protrusion.

Hi John,
character protrusion was introduced more than a decade ago in pdfTeX.
There are many good reasons to use LuaTeX but you don't need LuaTeX if
character protrusion is the _only_ feature you need.

There is a LaTeX package "microtype" which has reasonable defaults.
If you can't use this package as a Plain TeX user, consult the pdfTeX
manual (section 7.3).  It's not difficult to create a setup but maybe
a bit inconvenient because you need such a setup for each font you're
using.

 > The default protrusion factors are contained in a table in a file named
 > otfl-font-dum.lua. These factors are too large for use in e.g., a
 > novel. I can of course modify this file for my own use. But if I want
 > to send the modified file to a client to use is it sufficient to just
 > include a modified otfl-font-dum.lua file in the batch of macros I
 > send to the customer? Or can I put the modified table in a my luatex
 > template source document and expect it to override the original table?
 > 
 > Or is there another way to use a modified protrusion table that is
 > easily transportable to customers who aren't into replacing
 > files in the innards of TeX?

In LuaTeX you can try something like

  \directlua{fonts.protrusions.setups.default.factor=.6}

before loading the fonts (i.e. before \font\foo=...).

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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