[XeTeX] Font protrusion --- new or old ?

[Herbert Schulz]

On Feb 6, 2009, at 8:50 PM, Nicolas Vaughan wrote:

> Hello,
> One of the alledged weakenesses of XeTeX is its lack of support for  
> font
> protrusion and other microtypographical features. Defenders of
> microtypography, e.g., Hermann Zapf, assert that these goodies are  
> at least
> as old as metal typesetting, but were lost with the advent of  
> electronic
> typesetting. However, after having examined several books and type  
> specimens
> from the 16th to the 19th centuries (you can find them online in e.g.
> Archive.org), I have not been able to find any instances of font  
> protrusion.
>
>
> Is this microtypography stuff a new fad? Is it really a shortcomming  
> of
> XeTeX not to support it?
>
> Nicolas Vaughan

Howdy,

I think you have to see it to appreciate it.

Take a file with a reasonably long paragraph which produces a pdf  
which has some hyphenation when compiled without the microtype package  
(font protrusion and font expansion/contraction). Add the use of the  
microtype package and re-compile. Chances are good that the amount of  
hyphenation will go down dramatically or be eliminated completely and,  
when examined at a distance the paragraph will be much more evenly  
``gray'' with no white rivers, etc. TeX by itself is rather amazing  
but add the protrusion and expansion it just gets amazingly better.  
Don't get me wrong, it can be overdone so that the eye can detect the  
variations but the default setting for the microtype package are  
really quite subtle.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)