Re: Metafun::followtokens : more than one path; possible enhancements; notes

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 10:02 PM 1/28/01 +0100, Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:

>A future enhancements could be a \longfollowtokens that automatically
splits a
>(single) token list into as much paths as necessary (the user should
>preventively define enough paths), more like a parshape (actually, the
splitting
>could be done by parshaping the text using the lengths of the paths as
>parshape...). But this is definitely too much for me, at least at the current
>stage of knowledge of both TeX and ConTeXt.
>
>Final note: I suspect that some fine tuning on these macro group could render
>TeX--XeT useless. I mean, you can reflect a whole paragraph: first typeset it
>to get the linebreaks, then apply \followtokens to each line ... you don't
even
>need a reflected font! Actually, any kind of rotatation/skewing/etc, normally
>achieved with PSTricks, could be achieved this way, in a
driver-independent way

The current method would break on complicated tex code, since we (using
some tricks) work on token lists. Imagine languages where 4 chars become
one lig. 

However, i do have a slightly other alternatuve running here, but need to
finish it with regards to spacing. That one works ike : 

followtokens("some complicated string", path, offset); 

Technically it comes down to feeding the string into a btex/etex and
disassembling the resulting picture. Faster, less mem, more beautiful, but
less instructive -)

Concerning multiple path's, it should not be that hard to support auto
splitting. 

In your patch, i wonder why you don't use two followtokens, since you can
overlay pictures and by setting the boundingbox explicitly you can then
achieve the same results. I will look into your code later [maybe next
month, when i start revisioning the metafun manual]. 

Hans  

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