Special Help Please :)

In view of the expertise available here Lars Madsen suggested that I
explain what I am doing... I am happy to do that in the hope that you
can see the wood for the trees. I have not written at length before
because it is usually objectionable/off-putting to potential helpers,
but since I need the help of real experts maybe being informed at
length will actually be beneficial - as Lars suggested.

After a month at this, I have relatively few outstanding issues, but
those that remain are proving problematical. I'll describe what I'm
trying to do first and, then the problems. All suggestions will be
very gratefully received.

Whilst no longer professionally engaged in software development (as
architect or coder) I have experience of a variety of languages and
methodologies... but have found TeX/LaTeX impenetrably obscure at the
level I seem to need to work at: I have looked as the source for
Memoir and LaTeX2e but have found too many imponderables for my
limited experience with it to allow me to adapt it myself or write
sophisticated new macros from scratch. I need help... professional
help...

OBJECTIVE

To typeset a 7-800pp book (~320k words), using the Memoir class. It is
a novel, not a technical document. I have EPS graphics in footers and
as breaks, and am using XeLaTeX in order to use about half a dozen
special fonts (I'm well aware of guidelines concerning font diversity,
but there are artistic justification - trust me, I'm being
tasteful :)). I'm using TeXnicCentre with MiKTeX 2.7.

The LaTeX code is being produced from the source document in Microsoft
Word with VBA code I have written myself (the Word-to-LaTex converter
I tried wasn't suitable); standard LaTeX features are handled easily
(character accents, punctuation, font selection, etc.) and I have a
facility to "in-line" pure LaTeX when necessary. This approach
facilitates round-trip engineering: When adjustments need to be made,
experiments/changes are made to the LaTeX directly and once proven are
ported back into the source document.

The stylistic features of relevance are:

1. The narrative is typically fully justified, indented text.

2. Interspersed with the narrative is "other text" in different fonts,
at different sizes, with centered or other alignment. typically in
small blocks of 1-3 paragraphs, typically within narrowed margins.
This "other" text I have been handling by implementing the relevant
features of the Word styles as environments.

3. Some text is patterned across multiple lines/paragraphs; for
example

THIS IS a contrived example of how i want my text TO APPEAR
this is A CONTRIVED example of how i WANT MY TEXT to appear
this is a contrived EXAMPLE of HOW I want my text to appear
this is a contrived example OF how i want my text to appear

Where words in all capitals appear and the lower case words merely
indicate spacing. Whilst this speciifc case is now solved, there are
other patterns to create... one of which includes placing single words
in a circle around a short paragraph as illustrated below

word
word word
| the |
word |-central para-| word
word word

In this case, the central paragraph occupies two lines and the words
to left and right of it should be be vertically centred in the height
of the central paragraph. The desired result was achieved in Word by
using a table.

3. Some text strings are required to smoothly increase/decrease in
font size (on the same line spacing). I modified the Diminuendo
example to provide a Crescendo, but owing to character spacing
problems reverted to simply manually setting the character heights for
the limited number of strings where this feature is required (defining
new commands for certain substrings).

4. There are three levels of strengths of break to be indicated (one
chapter runs to 60,000 words and needs more subdivisions); each of
these is to be a "Wingding 2" type asterisk, whose size indicates the
strength of the narrative break.

Because the Windows "Wingding 2" font is a Symbol font, I found it
impossible to use as I had the other fonts, and therefore resorted to
generating the required shape in Mathematica. Owing to limitations in
the latter the bounding box cannot be fully controlled; I cannot re-
edit the EPS in e.g. Photoshop because when PS re-renders on save it
introduces visual artefacts. I'm therefore stuck with imperfectly
sized graphics (or nasty looking graphics).

5. Good book design - specifically recto-verso line alignment, though
where special fonts & sizes are used this requirement is relaxed.

PROBLEMS

A. Putting the break graphic into a fixed height space (nominally 2
lines of the standard font) such that the break height remains exactly
the same everywhere (including at the top of pages). The graphic must
remain with (i.e. be above) the paragraph that follows it, so it may
not occur on its own at the bottom of a page. The largest graphic is
16.9pt tall, yet using \vspace* to add precisely the nominally correct
amounts of spacing above and below leads to some breaks being 36pt as
expected and others in excess of 38pt... the recto-verso line
misalignment is unpleasantly noticeable.

B. Centering... yes, something as apparently simple as horizontal
centering. I simply wish to center certain paragraphs, leaving myself
the freedom to adjust spacing above and below without something
thinking it knows better. I have been able to adjust the margins by
several methods (Memoir's adjustwidth, directly setting the margins,
etc.) but whilst I can center text or inset the margins *alone* (i.e.
not introduce vertical spacing artefacts) I cannot seem to control
both margins and alignment and not get extra vertical spacing at the
top (which, in the case of adjustwidth is due to the underlying List
environment). In the places where I want normally indented paragraphs
in narrower margins there is no problem.

How might I eliminate the extra before vertical spacing of adjustwidth
or otherwise centre text within narrowed margins in a way that leaves
me in control of the vertical? [TeX/LaTeX.. *The Outer Limits* of
typesetting?]

I hope that was informative....

Julian



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Special Help Please :)
    ... typically within narrowed margins. ... in a circle around a short paragraph as illustrated below ... font size (on the same line spacing). ...
    (comp.text.tex)
  • Re: Special Help Please :)
    ... typically within narrowed margins. ... in a circle around a short paragraph as illustrated below ... font size (on the same line spacing). ... I'm not familiar with whatever is special about a Symbol font that prevents it being used. ...
    (comp.text.tex)
  • Re: User Form with common formatting options found in dialog boxes
    ... You could easily call up the built-in dialogs for modifying the paragraph ... formatting of the style or modify the font formatting of the style. ... if you only want to deal with a few fonts and line spacing ...
    (microsoft.public.word.vba.userforms)
  • Re: Line Spacing is mysteriously locked at about 14 points.
    ... > And there's no Spacing Before/After? ... But there are not any larger characters including ... If you change a paragraph from 12 points ... If you've changed the font size of the text and the line spacing ...
    (microsoft.public.word.pagelayout)
  • Re: text formatting....AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
    ... If the person who originally created the text was more creative than usual, you might also have to know line spacing and other formatting characteristics. ... you might be able to approximate the look if you can find a font that is similar to that used on the shirt. ... In MS Word, the effect of having "different spaces between the words" is called "justified", which simply means that each line goes all the way to the margins on both sides -- if the line is long enough to fill the space between the margins. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)