Nicholas

You've got some good ideas here. But these are concerns shared by
others as well. Have no fear, it's in the works.

Gerald

>
> It's not especially rare to have on-the-fly adjustment of
> word wrapping in a text editor. For instance, Metapad, a
> very likable Notepad replacement, adjusts word wrap as
> you resize its window. You become very aware of hard returns
> vs. flowed text! (I love its "Commit word wrap"
> command, btw.)
>
> Many years ago, Scientific American (probably when Knuth's
> Metafont was first announced) printed a quite-remarkable
> and fairly-long paragraph in which the type style of each
> letter changed progressively from, say, serif, to sans-serif.
> The change between, say, consecutive e's was imperceptible,
> but you could plainly see the progressive change along
> the course of the whole paragraph.
>
> The text was created (very likely) by Metafont, probably
> in TeX context (sorry for the pun), by giving each character
> (or possibly small blocks) different parameters to define
> the character's shape. The difference between consecutive
> parameters was quite small.
>
> I'm not sure I understand what Metafont is, btw, but if it
> makes sense in this message, that's sufficient, for now.
>
> With modern very-fast CPU chips, it should be quite practical
> to set up a group of sliders to permit on-the-fly
> redefinition of the Metafont parameters that define the
> appearance of the displayed face. This redefinition would
> quickly or immediately modify all text displayed on the
> screen.
>
> Imagine being able to vary such parameters as x-height (in
> proportion to cap. height, or, vary cap height, keeping
> x-height fixed). Or, vary stroke weight, from the extremes
> being ultralight and extra-bold (unless done with a lot of
> sophistication, the result could look pretty bad, as does
> "algorithmic italics"!)
>
> Other possibilities would be serif "weight", aspect ratio,
> looseness/tightness of inter-letter spacing, perhaps
> ratio of stroke thickness for horiz. vs. vertical, with
> progressive changes for various angles. (A simple cap O
> could start as a simple circle with a constant-width stroke,
> but could be thus modified to have its thickest portions
> vertical; its outline form would then contain an
> ellipse or two.
>
> Some modifications could be restricted to certain details,
> such as the size of the loop in a small e (and probably
> the loop in the small a, the kind that is shaped like a tiny
> small "d" with a left-pointing "flag" at the top).
>
> Ascender and descender length are yet more.
>
> Imagine a novel in which the author trims the typography of
> the text to enhance the mood; that could easily be over-done.
> Maybe it's just simply a bad idea; a well-designed book
> with (as usual) just one carefully-chosen face for body text
> is very workable.
>
> This is not the first time I've thought that what current
> computer technology permits, has outstripped our imagination
> about what we can do with it. Nevertheless, one does need to
> realize that just because something can be done doesn't say
> it should be done.
>
> Best regards,
>
> --
> Nicholas Bodley |@| Waltham, Mass.
> Opera browser fan/user