X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["1780" "Thu" "10" "April" "1997" "14:10:30" "+0100" "Robin Fairbairns" "Robin.Fairbairns@CL.CAM.AC.UK" nil "42" "Re: Small caps is not a shape" "^Date:" nil nil "4" nil nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.5/8.8.4) with ESMTP id PAA26741; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 15:10:42 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from listserv.gmd.de by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <10.D104EB36@listserv.gmd.de>; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 15:10:40 +0200 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 123093 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 15:10:38 +0200 Received: from heaton.cl.cam.ac.uk (exim@heaton.cl.cam.ac.uk [128.232.32.11]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.7.6/8.7.4) with SMTP id PAA17943 for ; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 15:10:37 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from cl.cam.ac.uk [128.232.1.34] (rf) by heaton.cl.cam.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 1.59 #2) id 0wFJcW-0004jA-00; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 14:10:32 +0100 Message-ID: Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 10 Apr 1997 14:47:16 +0200." <9704101247.AA08131@sgibulirsch6.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 14:10:30 +0100 From: Robin Fairbairns Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: Small caps is not a shape Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1910 > This is to point at a shortcoming of NFSS2: (I don't know whether > this has already been discussed when designed NFSS) There are many potential axes that NFSS could have incorporated. I don't remember enough of the original papers to be sure off hand how the present set were arrived at. > There is such a thing as a slanted/italic small caps font > (see Sebastian Carter's "Typographers on Type" for an example: > it contains a page showing different fonts of the Zapf Renaissance (1986) > family, including such a font). So you reckon small caps is "just another axis"? Well, you're not alone... > So it doesn't seem appropriate to classify small caps as a shape, > rather, I think, it should be considered as a case. Thus resulting > in control sequences like > \textcaps{...} and {\capscase ...} > or the like, analogous to uppercase and lowercase. Except that uppercase and lowercase are TeX primitive mechanisms with truly eccentric properties, which can't be used in a modal fashion, as in your second example. > With the current fonts and current NFSS, it is e.g. not possible > to markup names with small caps ... [with] italics Quite so. However, adding an axis to NFSS to take account of *one* oblique SC font seems to me excessive. I don't believe that NFSS is perfect, but I don't think it's bad as it is. > Unfortunaly I can't think of any way to incorporate this easily > in NFSS and especially in its current interface. An N^{3}FSS (for LaTeX 3) could perhaps consider the possibility of variable numbers of axes for font families. To incorporate it in N^{2}FSS (the one in 2e) would imply changing pretty much all the code to add a fixed extra axis to every font. It would be worse than the font changes between 2.09 and 2e. Robin Fairbairns