Re: centering title and THEN adding something to the left of it

[Alexander Kobel]

On 12/16/2013 02:54 PM, Alex Loomis wrote:
> This is really minor, but I was noticing that the positioning of the
> spaces in "Fairy Tale Ending" gives it the illusion of being a little
> too far to the left. Is there a way to center lines on a word instead of
> centering the entire phrase?

Hi Alex,

IIUC that's pretty much what Kieren wanted to in the first place, except 
that you add stuff to the left /and/ the right. So, if instead of

#1 Fairy Tale Ending [""]
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      center this

you want

#1 Fairy Tale Ending
         ^^^^
      center this

simply use the same approach, but with the "#1 Fairy " part to the left, 
\halign #RIGHT-ed, and " Ending" \halign #LEFT-ed on the right. If you 
choose an X-extent for with-dimensions larger than #empty-interval, you 
can fake a higher total line length, but AFAICS, that's about it.
I cannot see an automated version around the corner which figures out 
the proper word to put in the center. Might be doable by looping over 
all words, computing their extents, and taking the "most centered one", 
but maybe you need to have several short word for the middle part, 
depending on the length of the lines above and below, and so on. YMMV.


Best,
Alexander