two drop caps questions

two drop caps questions

[James H. Cloos Jr.]

I saw an interesting variation on dropped caps recently (in
McCaffrey's latest, {\em The Skies of Pern}).  The capheight
of the dropped cap is about 2.5 times \baselineskip with its
baseline matching the second row of text's baseline.

(Some of the) sections w/in a chapter have a 'dropped cap'
which isn't dropped;  its capheight is about twice the text
font's capheight and its baseline matches the first line of
text.

The latter is of course quite easy to do.  Am I correct that
the former can be done a la NiceDroppedCaps but with voffset
set baselineskip smaller than NiceDroppedCaps sets it?  Or
should height be be adjusted instead?

For the second question, given:

\def\DC%
        {\NiceDroppedCaps{}{FontName}{0pt}{3}}

what needs to change so that something like:

\DC
\quotation{This chapter starts with some dialog,} he said.

does the right thing, just like this does:

\DC
This chapter starts with some dialog,'' he said.

Can it be done at all w/o changing the definition of \quotation,
\quote et al?  Would it be easier to make this work:

\DC
``This chapter starts with some dialog,'' he said.

-JimC
-- 
James H. Cloos, Jr.  <http://jhcloos.com/public_key>     1024D/ED7DAEA6 
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Re: two drop caps questions

[Hans Hagen]

At 07:35 AM 4/22/01 -0500, James H. Cloos Jr. wrote:
>I saw an interesting variation on dropped caps recently (in
>McCaffrey's latest, {\em The Skies of Pern}).  The capheight
>of the dropped cap is about 2.5 times \baselineskip with its
>baseline matching the second row of text's baseline.
>
>(Some of the) sections w/in a chapter have a 'dropped cap'
>which isn't dropped;  its capheight is about twice the text
>font's capheight and its baseline matches the first line of
>text.
>
>The latter is of course quite easy to do.  Am I correct that
>the former can be done a la NiceDroppedCaps but with voffset
>set baselineskip smaller than NiceDroppedCaps sets it?  Or
>should height be be adjusted instead?

right, just play with the values until you get what you want, since this is
also dependent of the font. 

>For the second question, given:
>
>\def\DC%
>        {\NiceDroppedCaps{}{FontName}{0pt}{3}}
>
>what needs to change so that something like:

\DC is not a good choice since this is a tables command. 

>\DC
>\quotation{This chapter starts with some dialog,} he said.

not that easy. For instance, 

\def\DroppedString{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ\XXX}

\def\XXX{``} \def\YYY{\NiceDroppedCaps{}{cmr10}{0pt}{3}}

\EveryPar{\YYY}

\noindent \XXX Bla bla bla bla bla''\input tufte

will work, but this too ugly an hack to use isn't it? 

>\DC
>``This chapter starts with some dialog,'' he said.

not sure, since '' is actually a ligature. I'll add it to the todo list. 

Hans
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