[texhax] Underscoring

[Michael Doob]

On Monday 19 November 2007 11:54 am, Philip Taylor (Webmaster) wrote:
> I have a (nasty) feeling that what Ira wants
> to achieve is beyond TeX in its basic form.
> If I understand Ira correctly, then at
> 
> 
> >> we could tuck the underscores around the descenders for a  
> >> perfect look. 
> 
> what is being discussed is an /interruption/ to the
> underlining to stop it just short of a descender, and
> to resume it just afterwards.  If this is the case
> (am I right, Ira), this would require information
> on the /positioning/ of the descender, which TeX lacks.

Actually, this would be pretty easy problem to solve (at least
conceptually) if one is willing to invest the (perhaps considerable) 
time in constructing a high-quality virtual font. A similar comment 
could be made about overlining to avoid the problem of overlines be 
either of fixed width or the width of the bounding box.

Cheers,
Michael

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Doob                    Telephone: (204) 474-9796
Department of Mathematics       Fax: (204) 474-7606
University of Manitoba          email: Michael_Doob at umanitoba.ca
Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3T 2N2
------------------------------------------------------------------