[OS X TeX] leading < 1

[Jonathan Kew]

On 1 Mar 2005, at 12:54 pm, Hans van Maanen wrote:

> Hi --
>
> No, it's
> \linespread{0.8}\selectfont
> that does not work.
>
> Maybe I should have added I use XeLaTex here, to be able to use the 
> font. Does that make any difference?
>
>

XeTeX calculates "height" and "depth" of each line on the basis of the 
"ascent" and "descent" values that the font claims. If these are 
excessive, then TeX's \lineskip will kick in and override the normal 
\baselineskip setting (see The TeXbook, chapter 12), and in effect this 
will cause a minimum linespacing. So the leading that you're seeing is 
what the font designer (for better or worse) decided was the minimum 
appropriate amount.

To work around this, you'd need to set \lineskiplimit to a negative 
value, so that TeX will allow the ascent of one line to (theoretically) 
overlap the descent of the preceding line, without switching from 
\baselineskip to \lineskip as the interline glue.

You should be able to confirm that this is the issue by setting 
something like

	\lineskiplimit = -1000pt

before the text where you want tighter leading. (This will effectively 
disable the automatic spreading of lines when tall or deep characters 
occur.) However, be aware that other LaTeX commands/environments/etc 
might reset this parameter, so you may need to reset it from time to 
time; and you may need to set it back to a more normal value for parts 
of your document where normal \lineskip is the expected spacing.

JK

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