[XeTeX] Font protrusion --- new or old ?

[Nicolas Vaughan]

@ Herb:

You're right on something. Once you meet character protrusion, you'll never
again see a right margin typeset without such microtypographic feature
thoroughly straight.  That happened to me when I began using the microtype
LaTeX package.

But now I also see askew the right margins of classic, well typeset books.
Thus, I wonder if straightness is also in the eye of the typesetter.

Nicolas Vaughan


On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 9:50 PM, Nicolas Vaughan <nivaca at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> One of the alledged weakenesses of XeTeX is its lack of support for font
> protrusion and other microtypographical features. Defenders of
> microtypography, e.g., Hermann Zapf, assert that these goodies are at least
> as old as metal typesetting, but were lost with the advent of electronic
> typesetting. However, after having examined several books and type specimens
> from the 16th to the 19th centuries (you can find them online in e.g.
> Archive.org), I have not been able to find any instances of font protrusion.
>
>
> Is this microtypography stuff a new fad? Is it really a shortcomming of
> XeTeX not to support it?
>
> Nicolas Vaughan
>
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