Re: Novel use of .char

[Peter Schaffter]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2024, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> One thing that itches me a little about using a diversion this way is
> that I've documented glyphs as being drawn upward and to the right from
> the text baseline.  That's not happening here.  So either I've
> documented the formatter wrong or you're exercising an underspecified
> part of the system.

As noted, I originally suspected the latter.

> Your string definition has to add motions to place the glyph
> correctly.  So maybe when `char` or a similar request is
> assembling its contents, it should check the node it's processing
> to see if it is a diversion, and perform such adjustment itself.

Putting the motions in the diversion was how I went about it first.
When that didn't pan out, I went the string route, which was when I
discovered the diversion needed an actual glyph in it in order to
work as I hoped.
 
> (Normally, outputting a diversion draws it downward from the current
> drawing position and leaves the drawing position at its bottom-left
> corner.  When using a diversion as a glyph, we want to set it on the
> text baseline, essentially drawing it upward, and leave the drawing
> position at the diversion's bottom-RIGHT corner.)

Is it worth fixing this, too?  The uses of diversion glyphs are few.
Documenting the anomalous drawing behaviour might be all that's
required.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
https://www.schaffter.ca