[texhax] Strange formatting.

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Dear Tom --

> OK.  Clearly I have to retract what I said about a possible bug, given
> the responses from obviously knowledgeable persons. Nevertheless, I
> still regard the behavior as strange, and I have to mull over the
> responses and see if I can understand the implications. Thank you!

To gain a better feeling for what is happening (and why it is
happening), you might like to process the two following
examples, which use the sequence \scriptsize, \footnotesize,
\small, \normalsize, \large, \Large, \LARGE, \huge,
in forward and reverse order within two paragraphs.  You will,
I hope, see that the size command is honoured at the point of
occurrence for the font, but only the last size command is
honoured when computing \baselineskip for the entire paragraph.

My thanks to Barbara for pointing out that I had failed to
notice the trailing \normalsize in your original example.

Philip Taylor
--------
\documentclass {article}
\parindent = 0 em
\begin {document}

\scriptsize Would that I had not forgotten\\
\footnotesize to bring my French book\\
\small at the appropriate time\\
\normalsize my benevolent and much respected\\
\large French master, whom I view\\
\Large with feelings of the deepest affection\\
\LARGE need not have awarded me this trifling\\
\huge imposition by way of a reminder.

\vskip 2\normalbaselineskip

\huge Would that I had not forgotten\\
\LARGE to bring my French book\\
\Large at the appropriate time\\
\large my benevolent and much respected\\
\normalsize French master, whom I view\\
\small with feelings of the deepest affection\\
\footnotesize need not have awarded me this trifling\\
\scriptsize imposition by way of a reminder.

\end {document}