parshape ...

parshape ...

[Denis B. Roegel]

I am playing a bit with the parshapes. If I try the example
sent previously, where I use \input douglas instead
of \dorecurse{100}... and with douglas.tex being

%douglas.tex
Donald Knuth has spent the past several years working on
a system allowing him to control many aspects of the design
of his forthcoming books---from the typesetting and layout
down to the very shapes of the letters! Seldom has an author
had anything remotely like this power to control the
final appearance of his or her work. Knuth's \TeX{}
typesetting system has become well-known and available
in many countries around the world. By contrast, his METAFONT
system for designing families of typefaces has not become as 
well known or available.

In his article ``The Concept of a Meta-Font'',
Knuth sets forth for the first time the underlying
philosophy of METAFONT, as well as some of its products.
Not only is the concept exiting and clearly well executed,
but in my opinion the article is charmingly written as well.
However, despite my overall enthusiasm for Knuth's idea and
article, there are some points in it that I feel might be
taken wrongly by many readers, and since they are points
that touch close to my deepest interests in artificial intelligence and
esthetic theory, I felt compelled to make some comments to
clarify certain important issues raised by ``The Concept of a Meta-Font''.
%-----------

and with the first shape being 

\startuseMPgraphic{test 1}
  path p ; p := fullcircle scaled 6cm randomized 1cm;
  build_parshape(p,6pt,0,0,\baselinedistance,
    \strutheight,\strutdepth,\strutheight);
  draw p withpen pencircle scaled 1pt;
\stopuseMPgraphic

I get results that are not so good for the first shape
(of course, since the shape is random, you won't get the
same) but they seem improvable. For instance, this example
shows that the words can protrude left of the left baselinedot,
which doesn't happen in the four ``standard'' shapes.

The second shape also shows that when the last line is too narrow,
it should probably be discarded.

Denis