When I finish reading the Appendix D: Dirty Tricks in the TeXbook, I rethink a question: is it possible to align some character boxes like this:
The input may be like this:
\font\fortyeightrm=cmr10 at48pt
\font\twentyfourrm=cmr10 at24pt
\parindent=0pt
{\fortyeightrm A}|\twentyfourrm a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r|
\bye
We assume that when TeX is scanning the big A
, it will place that character box at the baseline of the first line. When scanning the |
, it will enter a group, then TeX will place the character boxes a
, b
, c
, … , r
above then below the axis of the character box A
(at this time, TeX may be insert the line-break at the end of a line, for example, behind the character box i
)
I haven't a good and simple method to solve this. Also another question: is it possible to rotate the character box (maybe we should put it into a \hbox
) ?
Best Answer
Using 48pt and 24pt fonts is not a good idea, because the relevant dimension is the height of capitals. So the big letter should be in a larger size, in my opinion.
The
\hrule
commands are just to show the vertical alignment of the boxes. In Computer Modern, the "A" has quite a big overshoot at the top, so you may want to add a small correction for the right box height.For rotating boxes, you can use
eplain
's facilities to load the LaTeXgraphicx
package: