[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Washington Cyrillic





   ***  The Washington Cyrillic quandry worsens ***

 > Now I am trying to use [the WNCY Cyrillic fonts] and it almost works. 
 > But not quite. Here is a typical problem I encounter.  
 > The letter pair <t><s>  *and* the single
 > letter <ts> both occur in Russian, and must not be confused. After
 > trying I believe I can typeset  only one correctly:
 > 
 >   --- To get the single glyph <ts> I can indeed key an active
 > character.  And there is no problem with hyphenation. So far so good.
 > 
 >   --- BUT, to get the letter pair <t><s>, I cannot key <t><s> since a
 > ligature converts it to <ts>.  The obvious TeX tricks to prevent the 
 > ligature do not really work: I cannot type <t>{}<s> since that loses
 > me the non-zero negative kern between <t> and <s>.  Hyphenation there
 > is however is OK.  


Alas, as Knuth indicates in the TeXbook (answer to the first exercise in
Chapter 5), this plausible solution is a boobytrap, indeed:
<t>{}<s> fails to inhibit the ligaturing precisely when the hyphenation
mechanism is really exercised. Knuth then suggests introducing a (zero)
kern, say by:

                      <t>\kern0pt <s>

Alas again! --- this just rolls us from frying pan into the fire!
Indeed hyphenation is thereby inhibited throughout the word!!

Barbara's reply anticipates this quandry, suggesting a trick well known
>From its use in German.sty; this trick *partially* restores the
hyphenation we have just lost.  

                 <t>\-\kern0pt\penalty10000\hskip0pt <s>

As she says, one can try dropping the discretionary break \-.

     Thus with Barbara's help we still suffer (probably slightly)
damaged hyphenation and (definitely and totally) lost kerning. So my
original problem is today more unsolved than I said yesterday:

 > Any solutions to type the letter pair <t><s> without spoiling the 
 > typography?

       Now that the situation is in better in focus, I recall 
that Omega does fix these problems.  And what about eTeX?

                 Larry Siebenmann