🚀 go-pugleaf

pcj1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Pierre Jelenc):
>
> accented letters, including capitals. The problem is that there is not
> enough free space above the letters as they are now to accomodate the accents
> without bumping into the descenders from the preceeding line.
>
> I can see three possibitities:
>
> - Squeeze in the accents in whatever space there is and ignore the possi-
>   bility of collision with the descenders.

Not a good possibility. OK if you only have few accents.

> - Increase the headroom above the letters to accomodate the accents, and
>   ignore the increased leading this introduces. Since accented capitals
>   are rare, this increased blank space would most likely be quite noticeable.
>   In that case, should I designate the font by its original point size, or
>   should I take the increase into account?

Yes, usually it is done this way. If you want accents, you also need
the space for them.

> - Squash the capitals that need an accent, so that the letter + accent fit
>   in the same space as the unaccented letter. Can that be done without
>   totally destroying the appearance of the letters?

This is the way it was done for computer fonts and typewriters as well.
It looks awful.

In many fonts designed for German, or any language with accented caps,
all the capitals are slightly smaller than lowercase letters with
ascenders. This gives the possibility to have enough room for accents.
However, this will not work with all designs -- for example it will
not look good for "classical", or "modern" fonts like Bodoni.
The problems mentioned here arise especially in Scandinavian. Here
you need the A with ring, and the ring must be large enough not to be
considered as a dot.

So long

-=- tobi -=-