Re: XeTeX 1.0 - request for comments

Le 18 oct. 05 à 13:25, Jonathan Kew a écrit :

> To some extent, I feel that it runs counter to the XeTeX paradigm,  
> which is to work with fonts as provided by the font designer,  
> making full use of the designer's spacing, positioning, kerning,  
> variants, features, etc., rather than treating a font as merely a  
> collection of glyph shapes and expecting the typesetting  
> application to explicitly control every aspect of glyph choice and  
> placement.

Exactly my sentiment as well.

Regarding the irregular baselines which motivated my original message  
in this thread: in MacWrite II and Pro you had the option of having  
either (i) a fixed baseline (in points, centimeters or inches, say)  
or (ii) a variable baseline (in lines, for example single, 1.5 or  
double spacing), the variations depending on the glyph content of  
each line. In my PhD thesis, for example, which was written using  
MacWrite II and Expressionist, I used to set the baselineskip (in  
Format > Paragraph) to 20 pt, such that it did not vary given the  
text was using a mixture of Helvetica and Symbol.

Would it be possible to implement that sort of alternative in XeTeX,  
or is it possible simply by adjusting carefully some plain TeX  
parameters? In that case, for paragraphs containing a specially big  
glyph it would be possible to return to the standard TeX settings (ie  
variable baselines), on a per-paragraph basis.

The problem, of course, would be to move, in this way, further away  
from TeX, pdfTeX and Omega, which is not necessarily a good thing in  
itself.

Bruno