[texhax] Font Size Question

[Axel E. Retif]

On  22 Jun, 2010, at 22:15, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> On 22 June 2010 Axel E. Retif wrote:
> 
>> The OP asked:
>> 
>>>> Can you tell me how you (or I) would know the defined font sizes
>>>> for a given class, like your book class example?  Where do you
>>>> look for such information, etc.
>> 
>> Well ---such information is in the bkXX.clo (for book class) and
>> sizeXX.clo (for article, report and letter classes).
> 
> Sure.  The OP assumed that he could solve his problem by
> reverse-engineering LaTeX.  You told him how to proceed.  But I'm not
> conviced that reverse-engineering LaTeX is a good idea.  There are
> better solutions.

Sorry, but I can't see how you consider this reverse-engineering, and not \DeclareMathSizes, which you talked about in your previous email. And the OP asked how he could *know* which were the defined font sizes for a given (point size option in a) document class, where he could "*look* for such *information*".

There is nothing esoteric about examining sizeXX.clo ---"The LaTeX Companion", 2nd. ed., for example, says (p. 144)

>> ... if you select the option 11pt, one of its actions is to change the list defaults. In the standard classes this is done by loading the file size11.clo, which contains the definitions for the 11pt document size.


And, p. 373,

>> For best results, however, one needs to use a document class designed for the selected document fonts or, lacking such a class, to redefine the commands \normalsize, \footnotesize, and so on...

Well ---the only thing the OP needs is to ensure that the smallest font size in his document is 7pt, to comply with some in-house rule established by people who usually don't know anything about typography.

Thomas,

I would recommend you two books especially ---the above quoted "LaTeX Companion", and Kopka & Daly: "Guide to LaTeX"; you can see them (and other titles) here: http://www.tug.org/books/ 

In general, there is a wealth of information in tug.org; for example,

http://www.tug.org/interest.html


Best

Axel