[pdftex] Optical alignment.

[John Culleton]

On Saturday 22 March 2003 11:20 am, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> > John Culleton wrote:
> > > On Friday 21 March 2003 06:16 am, Thierry Bouche wrote:
> > > > Le vendredi 21 mars 2003 à 00:08:05, John Culleton écrivit :
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > > yes, you need to upgrade your protcode.tex. The one you use
> > > > probably uses per mil of char width as unit, and the new one per
> > > > mil of em. That makes a difference...
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Th. B.
> > >
> > > Thanks. Searching CTAN I located only one version of protcode.tex
> > > listed under obsolete/systems/pdftex/ext. That version is identical
> > > with what I have. Can you suggest a source for the newer version?
> >
> > There is no newer version if protcode.tex than the one on CTAN. It
> > doesn't recognize pdfTeX versions from 1.0 on due to wrongly nested
> > \ifnum statements. I have posted a fix in the following message to this
> > list:
> >
> > <http://tug.org/mailman/htdig/pdftex/2001-August/001475.html>
>
> i was told that there was nothing worth keeping in systems/pdftex,
> which is why i moved the whole thing to obsolete/
>
> i note that tetex, at least, doesn't carry protcode.tex (does
> miktex?), so in effect protcode.tex can be regarded as "not
> represented on ctan".  anyone got any suggestions as to where we
> should put felix's mended version, to represent a "current copy"?
>
> robin
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The patch works, and fixed my problem. Many thanks. I found that a setting of
\pdfprotrudechars=1 
works best for me, using Palatino. 

I think I had the patched version before, forgot about the patch, and then 
reloaded my TeX system. So now I am functional once again.  

Tthe optical alignment feature is one of the features that sets 
pdftex/pdflatex/Context  apart from other forms of typesetting. The 
commercial product InDesign also has this feature. Other typesetting systems 
don't, including Quark, Pagemaker etc.  So optical alignment is an important 
resource IMHO. It is beta rather than obsolete AFAIK.

If one goes to http://pdftex.org one is forwarded to 
http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/
---so perhaps that would be a good place to put protcode.tex and abbr.tex.

John Culleton