Re: Changing math layout / microtypography

[Oliver Bandel]

Hi,

Zitat von Matěj Cepl <address@hidden> (Sat, 02 Apr 2016 11:01:05 +0200)

> On 2016-04-02, 00:10 GMT, Oliver Bandel wrote:
> > So, I want to try lout again, thinking that complex stuff can
> > be typeset in much less time than using LaTeX.  The drawback
> > in typography I want to limit by adapting some
> > microtypographical enhancements to the way, lout doe sthe
> > typesetting.
>
> I think that the limitation is that lout is very much tighten to
> PostScript.

Should be no problem.
It just needs the right Postscript-commands to create the output, and  
anything is fine.
But Postscript is an interpreted language, and so it takes much time
for a document to become rendered.
And with many additional commands for microtypographic enhancements,
the postscript code might become bloated and the rendering too slow.
There pdf will be much better, I guess.


> So, as long as you can express it in PostScript (and
> your ps2pdf won't screw up), I believe you can make Lout macro
> which will generate the stuff for you.

I would rather express it in lout, which creates the postscript...


> Which makes me wonder:
> most of the microtypographical extensions to TeX came with
> PDFTeX I believe and you still need it or its descendants (e.g.,
> XeTeX) to get them. But perhaps I am wrong, and you can do those
> microtypographical extensions with PostScript as well, and it
> was just a coincidence that it came with PDFTeX.

There were some enhancements in pdfTeX, that TeX does not have.
The problem is not Postscript, but TeX itself.

See here for example:
   
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/349/what-is-the-practical-difference-between-latex-and-pdflatex

So,,, pdfTeX with a certain package to enhance themicrotypography.

But what I had in mind for Lout (with this thread), was enhancing the  
math-formulas.
(If other enhancements wre epossible too, that would be nice too, of course.)

The Integral-Limits look better if they are above and below the  
Integral symbol.

Maybe I will find other deficiencies in lout's math-layout,
but this one was just so invasive that I asked it here.
(It even was the reason to subscribe this list to ask it!)


Maybe it would make sense to just create a package of layout  
enhancements (maybe hosting it on github or so),
for including it into lout documents...
...with the intention to make lout's math-output look better and close  
to TeX's output.
(Or even better?!).


Ciao,
   Oliver