> Hans Hagen a écrit :
> > Robert-André Mauchin wrote:
> >
> > The best would be to get rid off
> > \setcharacterspacing[frenchpunctuation] and adapt the frenchb Babel
> > module from Daniel Flipo (source and explanation here
> > http://daniel.flipo.free.fr/frenchb/ ), as a module (t-french
> > modification), or when loading the language, but I really
> > don't know how hard it would be since it handles a lot more than
> > just punctuation marks.
>
> no, active chars for such things are no solution and will not be
> supported in mkiv; setcharacterspacing is the way to go (and if it
> breaks that should be fixed instead); language support shoul dbe
> in the kernel anyway
>
> Hans
I don't specifically talk about active chars (I don't really not what
this is, I'm an user, not a coder), but instead of arbitrary adding a
0.25em before and 1em after the punctuation mark you should use the real
nnbsp (U+202F) before and real normal space (U+0020) after.
Why? Let me take your example again:
{\setcharacterspacing[frenchpunctuation]a? aa? aaa? abba?}
a\,? aa\,? aaa\,? abba\,?
Surprise: the first line is longer than the second. It's because sizes
of the U+0020 and U+202F depend on the font design, their size are not
exactly 1em and 0.25em.
Moreover, this is true that in french typography we should use a thin
space before some punctuation mark, and a thin space in France *was* one
fourth of an em. BUT due to modern digital typography, a thin space now
correspond to something like one fifth of an em.
In digital typography, the normal space, i.e. inter-word separation,
i.e. "espace justifiante" in French, has generally a size around one
fourth of an em, calculated by the engine (you know that better than
me). The thin space is a bit more than a half of the inter-word
separation, i.e. between 1/8 and 1/6 of an em.
So I *really* believe that you should not define space before and after
punctuation with "arbitrary" em spacing. There must be a way to do a
"search and replace" with the correct glyphs (U+202F and U+0020) before
and after punctuation marks.
> language support should be in the kernel anyway
I agree of course, but although I believe this would encourage french
"texers" to use Context, I don't think typography for a specific
language is the priority for you&Taco right now.
I wish you luck for the next beta release!
Bob.
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