Message-Id: <9311241014.AA25244@sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Wed, 24 Nov 93 11:01:58 EST
From: Werenfried Spit <SPIT@VM.CI.UV.ES>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      \em and italic correction
Status: R


Hello,
I have a remark to make regarding \em. It is very well possible
that it has already been dealt with in LaTeX2e, but I do not
remember having seen it mentioned. Anyway. The \em command in
LaTeX (2.09) is quite an intelligent one: it switches to another
font depending on the font in current use. Thus, the writer does
not have to think about what font to use to emphasise; \em will
do the job. A nice piece of logical formatting. But.
The writer does have to include possible italic corrections by
hand. So, in the end, she does have to remember which font
currently is in use and which font will be use to emphasise
in order to know if and where an italic correction should be
inserted. Exit logical formatting.
Would it be feasible to do something about this? (I mean, it
would be very easy if \em was a command with an argument, like
\em{emphasized text}, but since its structure is different
I do not really know myself how difficult or expensive it would
be to give \em  the power to include an italic correction at
the end. An italic correction at its begin is easy, of course.)

Excuse me if this has already been discussed or dealt with.

        ------------------------------------------------
        Werenfried Spit          email: spit@vm.ci.uv.es
                                   tel: +34-6-386 4550
        Dep. de Fisica Teorica,  Universitat de Valencia