Re: [Groff] Small Caps

[Werner LEMBERG]

> For instance, consider the small-caps versions of each of the
> following:
> 
> a. Big-endian Implementations of Modula-2
> 
> b. Big-Endian Implementations of Modula-2
> 
> What about the first hyphen? How would you expect it to be printed
> in case (a), and in case (b)? In the first case, it should
> definitely be in the point-size of the small caps.  In the second
> case I'm not so sure, but in any case there is a question there.

No.  In both cases it has the point-size of the uppercase characters!
Everything else would disturb the flow of text -- remember that words
set in small caps areu usually embedded into a stream of
uppercase/lowercase words.

> Whatever your preferences, this can only be handled properly if each
> character is considered in context, for whether to print it in
> reduced size or normal size.  My .smallcaps macro does not handle
> this at all.

I think this is also incorrect.  `Small caps' is just a variant of
lowercase letters, so replacing the lowercase glyphs with small-caps
is completely sufficient.

> Again (this is cosmetic, but it does matter a bit): The "proper" way
> to do small-caps is not by using reduced-size caps of the current
> font.

I fully agree.  The proper way is to use fonts which already provide
small caps.  If you use the route groff->dvi->ps, you can do that
quite easily since dvips has excellent support for faked small-caps
which can't be simulated with your macro (kerning etc).


    Werner