Re: new version of Lout imminent

[Michael Piotrowski]

Hello,

address@hidden (Jeff Kingston) writes:

> I am getting together a new version of Lout.  If there is
> anything you want to suggest I add to this version, please
> post it to the Lout mailing list now.

I've got another suggestion regarding kerning; I wanted to provide a
patch, but haven't gotten around yet, so I'll just describe it.  In
z37.c it says:

  Actually we first convert ch1 and ch2 to corresponding unaccented
  characters, because metrics files don't seem to contain kerning
  pairs for accented characters.

It is true that most AFM files don't contain kerning pairs for
accented characters, and this approach provides reasonable defaults.
However, as it is currently implemented, kerning pairs for accented
characters will not be used, even if they *exist* in the AFM file.

It would be good if Lout would use kerning pairs for accented
characters if they exist, and only fall back to the kerning pair of
the unaccented characters if they don't exist.

The rationale is that the kerning requirements for combinations such
as Tä, Tâ, Tü, Wè, etc. differ markedly from Ta, Tu, We, etc., since
tha accented characters are much higher than the unaccented ones: What
might be ok for Ta might be too close for Tä.

Greetings

-- 
Michael Piotrowski, M.A.                               <address@hidden>
Public key at <http://www.dynalabs.de/mxp/pubkey.txt>