Re: A few questions about Lout

[Jeff Kingston]

In reply to Mats Broberg's questions:

> 1: Font installation in TeX & Children deterred me ALOT. To install a
> complete font with small caps, old style figures, alternate characters
> etc one needs to write a fontinst file, comprising a couple of hundred
> lines of code. Not good for us mere mortals! I get the impression that
> this is considerably more easy in Lout? Correct?

It's easy to install a font.  This does not include old style figures
and alternate characters.  You would need a separate font containing
those.  Lout does however produce small caps automatically for any font.

> 2: Is hanging punctuation (= commas, periods, colons, semicolons,
> quotation marks and hyphens protruding slightly into the margin)
> possible to achieve in Lout?

Yes, but it is not provided in the standard packages, so you would
need to do some programming, and even then it does not happen
automatically; i.e. you would need to invoke a symbol to get it
rather than just typing the character.

> 3: Is it possible to have multiple series of footnotes and margin notes,
> separated with definable rules and vertical spaces? E.g. something like
> this:

> Main text main text main tex main text @FootNoteSeriesA { A foot note in
> series A. } Main text main text main tex main text @FootNoteSeriesB { A
> footnote in series B } Main text main text main tex main text. Main text
> main text main tex main text.

Not really.  There are margin notes and footnotes, but only one series
of each.  Again, in principle Lout could do this but the programming
effort would be significant.

> 4: If it turns out the last line of a paragraph has only one or two
> words, is it possible to slightly, slightly tighten the paragraph so
> that the short line moves back to the preceding line? Can this be
> automated (for long documents)?

Lout has fixed rules for optimal paragraph breaking that cannot be
changed.  They generally give a pretty good result, comparable with
TeX, and they include trying to avoid short final lines of paragraphs.

> 5: I seem to remember from browsing the archive that someone asked about
> line numbering and got the answer that this is not possible in Lout?

Correct, not possible.

> 6: Is it possible to typeset on a grid in Lout? E.g. if there is a
> figure at the top of the page, make sure that the following main text
> starts at a multiple of the line spacing used, so that lines on both
> sides of the paper line up when you hold up the sheet?

You can't say, "typeset on a grid".  What you can do is set the various
options for paragraph spacing etc., and specify the exact height you
want each figure to have.  With a bit of care, you can get this.

> 7: At GNU, it says that Lout does "optimal paragraph and page breaking".
> AFAIK, TeX & Children only do optimal paragraph breaking. In what way
> does Lout improve the page breaking?

Lout can do optimal page breaking in a manner entirely analogous to
optimal paragraph breaking turned sideways.  However it does not work
very well when there are many floating footnotes and figures.

> 8: How about letterspacing? Is it possible to letterspace e.g. small
> caps or caps?

Yes, here and there by using a symbol that requests this.  If you want
something that happens automatically every time you invoke, say, small
caps, then no.

Hope this helps.

Jeff Kingston