Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!tank!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Printing the first letter of a chapter/article in big size
Message-ID: <19089@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 15 Aug 89 10:43:10 GMT
References: <205@imada.dk> <13654@netnews.upenn.edu> <1333@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 25

In article <1333@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu
(Jim Wright) writes:
>A style file called drop.doc was published in TeXhax v88 #16.  It does
>just what you want, but finding a good font for the big character isn't
>that easy.

A LaTeX version (drop.sty) is available from the Clarkson style archives.

Not only is it hard to find a good font, some of us find drop capitals
to be a nuisance in general.  They look pretty, but they can often
hamper readability.  (To see what I mean, take a look at a recent issue
or two of Unix/World: the drop capitals are too close to the following
text, leading to something that looks like

	|\   | ow if you thought it was
	| \  | ever possible to `scan'
	|  \ | or `skip' or in some way
	|   \| eat up the . . .

which is supposed to read `Now if ... was ever ... `scan' or `skip'
but---to me, at least---keeps reading `Now if ... was never ... `scan'
nor `skip'....)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris