river detection

[Ed L Cashin <ecashin@coe.uga.edu>]

Han The Thanh discusses in his thesis several problems that computer
typography systems face.  One problem that no current systems address
is "rivers", visual lines of blank space like this:

     XXXXXXXXX  XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX
     XXXXXXX   xxXX XXXXXXXX Xxxxx   XXXXXX XXXXX
     XX  XXX   XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX
     XXXXXXX  XXXX XXXXXXX XXXX  XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX
     XXX XX   XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXX
     XXXXX   xxXX XXXXXXXX Xxxxx   XXXXXX XXXXX X
     XXXX   XXX XXXXXXX XXXX  XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XX

... where there's a river on the left.  Hans has been doing many
experiments combining MetaPost and TeX, where they share more
information about the visual appearance of the typeset text than has
traditionally been available.

Would it be possible to use MP and TeX together in order to detect
rivers?  If so, it would be a computer typesetting first, according to
Thanh's thesis.  :)

-- 
--Ed Cashin                     PGP public key:
  ecashin@coe.uga.edu           http://www.coe.uga.edu/~ecashin/pgp/