Re: Add prefix to lyrics

[David Kastrup]

Alexander Kobel <address@hidden> writes:

> On 2010-09-02 18:03, David Kastrup wrote:
>
>> You might actually be better off with overlaps (implemented as
>> dashing with slightly negative distance).  Or with not using such a
>> font at all.  Which is not likely anyway.
>
> True, true.  Didn't think about this.  I'm not sure the problem
> exists, though - in the situation Dmytro mentioned, hyphens only get
> shortened.  Then, scaling is an option while overlapping is not
> applicable.  The equivalent approch for shortening would be to cut out
> a piece in the middle of the dash.  Both sound bad, IMHO.  Hm.
>
> @ David: What I'm not quite sure about yet: Do you - in general -
> think the font glyph should or should not be used?

I think that the font should provide the minimally acceptable hyphen.
If it gets shorter than that, no hyphen should be used at all.  Whether
longer hyphens are pieced together from this minimally acceptable hyphen
(which could be just a centered dot, and thus not extensible) or from a
larger extensible piece, I have no opinion about.

The typesetter TeX has "extensible characters" in its math modes which,
in the font, consist of a sequence of characters in growing sizes,
ultimately reverting to an arbitrarily extensible character using
straight pieces for the extensible part of the character.  The concept
has made it into Opentype fonts I think, and it sounds like the right
thing to require and use for hyphens that can extend arbitrarily.

-- 
David Kastrup