NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/comp/text/tex/14375

Text File | 1992-12-22 | 1.8 KB | 41 lines

Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Path: sparky!uunet!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!paladin.american.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!news.cso.uiuc.edu!rjekel
From: [e-mail] (Ross Jekel)
Subject: font switch at a line break
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Originator: [e-mail]
Sender: [e-mail] (Ross Jekel)
Organization: Nat'l Ctr for Supercomp App (NCSA) @ University of Illinois
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 19:05:32 GMT
Lines: 29

I began reading a book yesterday that has an interesting format
for the first line of the first paragraph of each chapter and was
wondering how this could best be done in TeX.

The paragraph starts with an initial and the rest of the first line is
in a small caps font.  The second line then switches back to your
normal roman font.  I wouldn't have really noticed this except the
first line of the first chapter ended in a hyphenated word with the
first part of the word in small caps and the second part on the second
line in normal type; it ended up looking something like this (SUG-
gest).

Although this (in my opinion) is not very good style, I still think it
is an interesting problem.  How could I use TeX's line breaking algorithm
to automatically switch the font at the end of the first line?
I thought about making a space active and fussing with penalties and
stuff, but I really didn't get much further than that.  I also wasn't
sure how to switch fonts if there was a word that was hyphenated at the
end of the line.

I would be interested in any solutions to this problem that work, as
long as they don't require you to guess how many words are going to
fit on the first line.

Either emailing or posting is fine.

Thanks.
Ross Jekel
[e-mail]