[Tex/LaTex] Grid typesetting with LaTeX3

grid-typesettinglatex3

Grid typesetting is something that is rather hard to achieve with LaTeX and as this question states there are currently two packages, e.g. grid and gridset, that can help to use grids. Unfortunately none of these packages seem to work flawlessly, gridset takes many compilations and grid has some limitations, according to the manual e.g. footnotes are not placed correctly.

Since the mentioned question already is some years old and I have read that LaTeX3 may make it easier to achieve grid typesetting, I wanted to know if there have been any improvements or new devlopements. I have found the xo-grid package on the LaTeX3 project page and was willing to give a try, but I couldn't really get it work. Is it already possible to work with xo-grid or is not yet ready for use? Or is there another package that I've overlooked?

Best Answer

At the present time, xor is usable for testing but certainly not ready for more general use. The xo-grid code is part of the larger rewrite of the output routine, so the same comment applies.

Getting to grips with xor is one of the biggest challenges facing the LaTeX3 Project: the code is complex and has evolved over many years. As such, there is currently no good estimate of when it will be production ready. It's also worth noting that the code will almost certainly break any LaTeX2e package that relies on the LaTeX2e output routine.

What would of course be useful (in addition to offers of help with the code) is to know what you tried and what did not work. This may well be more of a discussion than a strict Q&A issue, so might be best raised on the LaTeX-L list.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Spacing of sectioning commands for grid typesetting

As you have noted, ex (and em) lengths are relative to the currently used fonts. The reason for this depends on the application. In your instance it makes sense using a font size-specific length, since the typesetting the sectional heading may be different depending on whether the document is processed using 10pt, 11pt or 12pt (or, for that matter, any other font size) as \normalfont. For example, using absolute lengths (like pt, bp or pc, for example) may cause the gap between section headings and text to seem too small, or too large, if the font size is changed. The example below a font-based skip of 1em between a pseudo-section heading is replaced by a fixed-width 11.5pt skip (in 10pt, 1em or roughly 11.5pt, see the TeX Book, p 60):

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\bfseries% For bold font

{\normalfont Font-based skip of \verb!1em!} \par \medskip

\newcommand{\myskip}{\unskip\rule[0.5ex]{1em}{1pt}\ignorespaces}
{\normalsize 1 \myskip A section \par}%
{\large 1 \myskip A section \par}%
{\Large 1 \myskip A section \par}%
{\LARGE 1 \myskip A section \par}%
{\Huge 1 \myskip A section \par}%

\bigskip \hrulefill \bigskip

{\normalfont Fixed-width skip of \verb!11.5pt!} \par \medskip

\renewcommand{\myskip}{\unskip\rule[0.5ex]{11.5pt}{1pt}\ignorespaces}
{\normalsize 1 \myskip A section \par}%
{\large 1 \myskip A section \par}%
{\Large 1 \myskip A section \par}%
{\LARGE 1 \myskip A section \par}%
{\Huge 1 \myskip A section \par}%
\end{document}

Since I am not entirely sure of your sectional intent (that almost came out wrong), here's a suggestion when it comes to page-breaking woes. The needspace package provides \needspace{<len>} that issues a \break if there is less than <len> space available on the page. And, the code is not very complicated. Here is a modified version, now taking 3 arguments for the sake of this discussion:

\makeatletter
% \needspace{<len>}{<NOT enough space>}{<enough space>}
\newcommand{\needspace}[3]{\par \penalty-100\begingroup
  \setlength{\dimen@}{#1}%
  \dimen@ii\pagegoal \advance\dimen@ii-\pagetotal
  \ifdim \dimen@>\dimen@ii% execute the following if there IS NOT enough space on page
    \ifdim \dimen@ii>\z@
      \vfil
    \fi
    \break
    #2% <NOT enough space>
  \else% execute the following if there IS enough space on page
    #3% <enough space>
  \fi\endgroup}
\makeatother

It would be possible to redefine \section so as to use the above \needspace and condition on the type of \@startsection that should be called.

[Tex/LaTex] How to do grid typesetting with amsmath

The basic answer is that you have to make all your display objects fit into multiples of your grid, e.g., headings, display equations, etc. need to be preprocessed and boxed so that they fit the grid and similarly floats and footnotes have to be adjusted to honor the space requirements. There are a bunch of packages out there who are making an attempt at this, e.g., grid.sty from River Valley or ltxgrid from RevTeX and even if you do not want to use those, it might be worthwhile to look at what they do and how.

One option for something like display environments is to typeset them into a \vbox of column width and then measure the the amount of vertical space they occupy. Then add on top and below whatever is needed to get to the multiple of the grid. The tricky part then is to set \prevdepth properly so that the next line of text still aligns on the grid. Another problem is that you may want to split such material across the page. Using \unvbox might be an option but only ensure that you do not end up with stretchable glue that may break your grid.

Playing around with \lineskiplimit is possible and to some extend useful, but if set to a negative value for paragraphs it means that lines can overprint (and TeX will not detect this for you).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Spacing of sectioning commands for grid typesetting

[Tex/LaTex] How to do grid typesetting with amsmath

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