[pdftex] pdfTeX, Edmac and margin kerning

[John Culleton]

On Thursday 14 November 2002 01:28 pm, Oliver Heins wrote:
> I posted the following text to the german TeX-Newsgroup some days
> ago, but didn't get an answer (yet).  So I decided to translate it
> and repost it here.  Please excuse my bad english.
>
> I would like to typeset the text of a critical edition with optical
> margin adjustment.  The edition is tyepesetted with edmac
> (<http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/edmac/index.html>) under
> plain TeX.  Edmac und optical margin adjustment don't seem to
> cooperate with each other, as it can be seen in the following
> minimalexample.  My question is, how Han The Than's pdfTeX-hack is
> implemented, I read his thesis (or at least the according chapters),
> but still don't know where it's done: At the level of TeX's
> primitives (as I guess), or on the level of macros?  If it's
> implemented based on the primitives, why doesn't it work with edmac?
>
> I post a minimal example and try to show how the edmac's macros
> \pstart and \pend, which obviously prevent character protruding, work
> and how they change plain TeX's behaviour.
>
Can you run the file through pdftex instead of plain tex? Then
perhaps the optical adjustment described in Han's paper could be
added. (I am not familiar with edmac.) Pdftex and pdfetex are as far
as I can see proper supersets of plain tex. 

>
> ------- Schnipp --------
> % minimal example: edmac with (i.e. without) optical margin
> adjustment
>
> \hsize=3.2in
>
> \input edmac.doc
>
> \input protcode
> \setprotcode\font
> \pdfprotrudechars=1
>
> \beginnumbering
>
> \pstart
>
> EDMAC is a program written as a set of plain TeX macros for
> formatting complex critical editions. You mark up your text and notes
> using the tags provided by EDMAC, and then TeX will create a
> beautiful book for you with the text line numbered, lemmata referred
> to by line-number, up to six layers of notes at the bottom of the
> page (variants, testimonia, etc.), as well as up to six sets of notes
> sent to appendices. It is also possible to control the layout of each
> layer of notes separately: single column, two- or three-column,
> paragraphed, etc.
>
> \pend
>
> EDMAC is a program written as a set of plain TeX macros for
> formatting complex critical editions. You mark up your text and notes
> using the tags provided by EDMAC, and then TeX will create a
> beautiful book for you with the text line numbered, lemmata referred
> to by line-number, up to six layers of notes at the bottom of the
> page (variants, testimonia, etc.), as well as up to six sets of notes
> sent to appendices. It is also possible to control the layout of each
> layer of notes separately: single column, two- or three-column,
> paragraphed, etc.
>
> \endnumbering
>
> \bye
>
> ------- Schnapp --------
>
>
> edmac.doc:
> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/plain/contrib/edmac/edmac316.z
>ip
>
> protcode:
> http://sunsite.utk.edu/ftp/usr-218-2/CTAN/obsolete/systems/pdftex/ext
>/ there beside protcode.tex abbr.tex, too
>
> Above example compiled:
> http://www.offizinverlag.de/edmactest.pdf
>
>
> Beside the fact, that the lower section isn't really typeset the way
> it should be, pdfTeX (tested: pdfTeX (Web2C 7.3.7)
> 3.14159-1.00a-pretest-20011114-ojmw from Debian Woody's teTeX and
> pdfTeX (Web2C 7.3.9) 3.14159-1.10a-devel from experimental Debian
> packages of the newest neuesten teTeX beta (AFAIK)) at least does
> margin kerning there.  In the upper section, with activated edmac, it
> does nothing (visible).
>
> Edmac changes TeX's ouput-routine.  Everything within a \pstart
>  ... \pend-environment ist put in a box.  The definition of \pstart
> says: "\global\setbox\raw at text=\vbox\bgroup", what is ended in \pend
> (with "\egroup").  The changed output routine now calls macro a named
> \do at line, which fetches one line of text and writes it in a
> horizontal box: "\global\setbox\one at line=\vsplit\raw at text
> to\baselineskip \unvbox\one at line \global\setbox\one at line=\lastbox",
> then checks whether a line number is to be set and does so, if
> possible: "\hbox to \hsize{\affixline at num% this sets the linenumber
> \hfil\hbox to \wd\one at line{\new at line\unhbox\one at line}}}".  The macro
> \new at line only writes the current linenumber to an auxilary file.
>
> The output-routine of edmac doesn't differs IMHO from plain TeX's, it
> mainly does a \topins and a \footins.
>
> Worth mentioning is, that level 2 margin kerining
> (\pdfprotrudechars=2) changes the linebreaking, it is obviously
> computed by the new algorithm. Nevertheless, the actual protruding --
> the shifting of the margin characters around the margin -- isn't
> done.
>
>
> Rather helpless,
> olli
>
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John Culleton
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