[OS X TeX] Zapfino install progress, ``Peace on Earth'' card

[William F. Adams]

On Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 12:09  AM, Will Robertson wrote:

> I'm not sure if you make sense---are you saying it's easier in Mac OS 
> X, or easier "than"? Madly clicking through the character palette 
> (with glyphs overlapping sometimes) is not my idea of easy!

Using my setup is easier than Mac OS X 'cause there's no mousing 
involved.

>> * snip stuff over my head. I'll ask questions later
>> ...
>> \usepackage{omegazapfino}
>> ...
>> \ZapfinoText{This would be typeset in Zapfino w/ contextual 
>> ligatures.}
>> \ZapfinoRebus{This would have ornaments / pictures for words like 
>> (-(duck)-) and (-(pen)-)}
>
> If you're going to be calling \ZapfinoRebus anyway, why not 
> automatically replace "duck" and "pen" with their pictures. Let the 
> writer escape words that are required as text! What do you think?

I don't think that'd go over very well, and it wouldn't suit my usage, 
nor anything approaching what I'd call normal.

>> For swashes I was thinking something along the lines of:
>> ----a (that'd be the first level)
>> +----a (second)
>> ++----a (third)
>> +++----a (fourth)
>> \----a (a swash from the upward direction)
>> /----a (a swash from the downward)
>> and reversing everything for forms appropriate to the ends of words 
>> --- does that sound okay?
>
> I'm not 100% sure I follow. If I was writing "america" and I wanted 
> swashes on both "a"s (ignore the plausability for now), I'd write 
> ----america---- with appropriate +,\,/ at the very begining and end of 
> the word and hyphens like +----america----/?

Yes, that's correct.

> Four hyphens seems excessive. Aren't there some unused ascii symbols 
> that might be more space efficient? ~ ^ * come to possible mind.

Those are already used for other things, and I do want it to stand out 
somewhat.

>> That way I could run checks (moving the em and en dashes to the end 
>> of the OTP) to remove them when they were added for letterforms w/ 
>> lacked such.
>> That leaves the matter of alternates in the middle of words... 
>> perhaps the paren-hyphen-paren option would work for that?
>> Hmm, co(-(g)-)ent --- is that too ugly?
>> co(--(g)--)ent
>> co(---(g)---)ent
>> That's not so bad, is it?
>> Then again, Zapfino has up to _eight_ styles for some letters.... so 
>> counting all those hyphens might get kind of tedious.
>
> How about a method which doesn't break up the word? (This is a very 
> rushed thought, so the usual disclaimers apply)
>
> If you are allowed commands, you could have like
>
> \swash[g,4]{cogent}
>
> to apply the fourth g swash to all the g's in "cogent".
>
> \swash[g,2,g,4]{engage} would make the first g have the second swash, 
> and the second (and subsequents) have the fourth.

That's beyond my understanding of Omega Translation Processes --- I 
suspect it could be done though, and if I do reach an understanding 
like that, I'll think about it.

Doesn't sound that user friendly though --- gotta count letters if 
there're dupes, get the count right, and transcribe it correctly and 
you don't know for sure 'til you process the file.... (I'm lousy at 
math --- why I became a graphic designer (but my first specialty was 
flexography which _required_ a _lot_ of math for calculating distortion 
around a cylinder &c. ::grr:: )

> Note that I have only just read about your Zapfino work, so I might be 
> violating the philosophy or something involved, not to mention I have 
> hardly thought the idea through. I'm just making it up as I go.

that's all I was doing ;)

> But I like not having to break the word. This method would also work 
> whereever the letter is in the word, so you get the same command in 
> all cases.

That is an advantage.

> You could even leave out the arguments and randomly swash everything 
> (\swash{cogent}). It'd be nice to be able to define swashes in words 
> in the preamble just like custom hyphenations, too.

I've considered that, but I think you need a certain measure of 
repeatability to preclude user frustration (::aah!:: it was perfect, 
but I fixed a typo and now it's not!)

> Like I said, I don't know much about this project. If I'm making 
> foolish suggestions, please forgive me!

The only foolish question is one unasked.

Thanks!

William

-- 
William Adams, publishing specialist
voice - 717-731-6707 | Fax - 717-731-6708
www.atlis.com

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