Medium caps

Medium caps

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Hello,

one more thing to add to the wish list: medium caps. I find often
(ok, depends on font) small caps to be too small, and normal caps
to be too big. So what about a medium caps, and the usual

\setupcapitals[sc=medium]

stuff. And since we are at it: suppose that I want to write
the 'compact disc' acronym (CD). If sc is set to yes, I write
\sc{cd}; but if sc is set to no, \sc{cd} gives cd, and not CD,
which is what I want. I think that \sc, when set to 'no', should
capitalize its argument.

--
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Re: Medium caps

[Johannes Hüsing]

On Sat, Oct 27, 2001 at 12:48:04PM +0200, Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> one more thing to add to the wish list: medium caps. I find often
> (ok, depends on font) small caps to be too small, and normal caps
> to be too big. So what about a medium caps, 

Depends on the font. If it offers a medium caps variant, it should be 
made available in ConTeXt. However, I have never seen a medium caps
variant in a font. And you are certainly not suggesting to manipulate
the shape of existing fonts?

> and the usual
> 
> \setupcapitals[sc=medium]
> 
> stuff. And since we are at it: suppose that I want to write
> the 'compact disc' acronym (CD). If sc is set to yes, I write
> \sc{cd}; but if sc is set to no, \sc{cd} gives cd, and not CD,
> which is what I want. I think that \sc, when set to 'no', should
> capitalize its argument.

No: I'd rather see sc as a variant to rm, not to cap.

Groet

Johannes
-- 
Johannes Hüsing | Domain: Adresse im Internet. Besteht aus einem 
hannes@ruhrau.de| technischen Teil (http://www.), einem Namen 
                | (erwin_meier) und einer Endung  (zum Beispiel 
                | .de für Deutschland) [J. Albrecht, "Zeit" 12/2001]

Re: Medium caps

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Giuseppe Bilotta schrieb:
>one more thing to add to the wish list: medium caps. I find often
>(ok, depends on font) small caps to be too small, and normal caps
>to be too big. So what about a medium caps, and the usual

No, no, no! That's nearly as ugly as script or gothic caps for a typographer!
If you got no real "small caps" (that is, an extra font) you should use
an other method of emphasizing.

Real small caps have the size of the lowercase letters, and good
uppercase letters are bit smaller than the upperlengths of the
lowercase (there are your "medium caps").

A frequent error of "modern" fonts is, that their uppercase letters are
too big - and look ugly if you use more than one at a time.

You're right using small caps for abbreviations -- good typographers try
to do so -- but medium caps are not "needed", only because real small
caps are unusual nowadays!

>\sc{cd}; but if sc is set to no, \sc{cd} gives cd, and not CD,
>which is what I want. I think that \sc, when set to 'no', should
>capitalize its argument.

Here you're right, I think.

-- 
Grüßlis vom Hraban!
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Re: Medium caps

[Marco Kuhlmann]

Giuseppe Bilotta wrote (2001-10-27 (12:48)):

> one more thing to add to the wish list: medium caps. I find often
> (ok, depends on font) small caps to be too small, and normal caps
> to be too big. So what about a medium caps, and the usual

Alternatively, to avoid "screaming capitals", you can use a
special typeface \vf that, compared to the main typeface, is
scaled down a little, say to 98%, and then write {\vf CD} to
get the desired result. I apply this method to typeset
acronyms; small caps in my opinion should only be used for
emphasizing (ie, names).

    Marco

-- 
Marco Kuhlmann                             marco.kuhlmann@gmx.net