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Old fashioned spacing in LaTeX
Posted by Laurentius in
11 Feb 2009 — 2:02pm
11 Feb 2009 — 2:02pm
(NOT "french spacing" as with \frenchspacing.)
There are two things I should very much like to know. The first is probably simpler, but the second would be better.
1. Is it possible to get english or french spacing around "!", ";", "?", and "!" without selecting french as the language after whose rules words are split at the ends of lines, i.e. without \selectlanguage{french} ?
2. Is it possible to do this but also increase the space after the last period (or similar sign) in a sentence, e.g. to 1 em?
Thanks in advance.
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11 Feb 2009 — 5:14pm
Yes, it's possible, but it's rather advanced.
I would create a new language definition file for the babel package and copy the spacing rules for the characters you need from the frenchb.ldf file. Then you just load your new language file via babel: \usepackage[norwegian2,french]{babel}.
As for the post-punctuation spacing, that's usually handled by means of a percentage, rather than an absolute value. So, to get \frenchspacing after a period without specifying \frenchspacing, do
\sfcode`\\.1000
This sets the spacing factor after a period to be 1. (For standard American typesetting, it's set to 3, i.e., \sfcode`\\.3000.)
If you want additional help for any of this, feel free to contact me via email, and I would be glad to help.
12 Feb 2009 — 8:14am
Thank you for your help. Copying the code that seemed relevant in frenchb.ldf did not work, however, however, I was able to use ecclesiastic.sty, changing all occurrences of "latin" to "danish", as well as adding the following, to allow normal "(?)" and "(!)":
\useshorthands{(}
\defineshorthand{(?}{\string(?}
\useshorthands{(}
\defineshorthand{(!}{\string(!}
As regards the space between sentences, I do not want to merely to be a glue factor (or whatever), but an extra space, that is always visible and wonderfully archaïc. Know how?
NB! When I say french spacing, I mean the opposite of \frenchspacing. I mean extra space before ?, !, :, and ;, as well as between sentences. Not the boring stuff that \frenchspacing does. Possibly, this is more correctly referred to as english spacing.
12 Feb 2009 — 10:35am
Karsten Luecke has provided this feature -- he calls it "typographic spacing" IIRC -- in some of his fonts, as a Stylistic Set.
13 Feb 2009 — 7:37am
As regards the space between sentences, I do not want to merely to be a glue factor (or whatever), but an extra space, that is always visible and wonderfully archaïc. Know how?
Very easy: \\xspaceskip=1em.
13 Feb 2009 — 4:22pm
Thank you. This works fine, until I change the language with \selectlanguage. The value of \xspacefactor does not change, but for some reason, it will have no effect throughout the rest of the document. Any idea what might remedy this?
13 Feb 2009 — 4:36pm
If you always want that xspacefactor, put it in the ldf file for that language.
13 Feb 2009 — 5:25pm
Yeah, I found out what the trouble was. Seems \selectlanguage{german} involves \frenchspacing, so I defined a \german that turns that off again.
13 Feb 2009 — 6:09pm
Would it be possible to prevent the colon from having the effect of dividing periods ("sentences")? (What a crazy idea, that they should.)
13 Feb 2009 — 6:59pm
I don't understand what it is you're asking.
13 Feb 2009 — 7:39pm
To prevent the extra space of \xspaceskip after colons.
13 Feb 2009 — 8:17pm
They shouldn't have extra space. There must be something screwy in your ldf file.