[Tex/LaTex] \textsc not working after \renewcommand

Question

I recently fond a nice document template (here) andI would like to use it for my thesis. However, the template uses the following line to change the default font for small capitals text:

\renewcommand{\scdefault}{ssc}

Then the \textsc command is used in the preambule to modify the appearance of \chapter and it works fine.

The problem is that anywhere in the text, if I try to use the \textsc command (or the \lettrine command), it does not transform the text in small caps. When I remove the \renewcommand line it work fine again, but the chapter does not look as I want.

Am I forgetting something?

Here is the code of my document:

\documentclass[a4paper,english, makeindex, oneside]{memoir} \usepackage{lettrine}

% New commands 
\renewcommand{\scdefault}{ssc} 
\newcommand{\uppercaps}[1]{\textsc{\MakeUppercase{#1}}}

% Style for chapters
\makechapterstyle{newchap}{
\renewcommand{\printchaptername}{}
\renewcommand{\chapternamenum}{}
\renewcommand{\printchapternum}{}
\renewcommand{\afterchapternum}{}
\renewcommand{\printchaptertitle}[1]{
\raggedright\huge\uppercaps{##1}
}}

\begin{document} \chapterstyle{newchap}

\chapter{First chapter}

\lettrine{T}{his is a lettrine} and this and 
this is supposed to be in \textsc{small caps font}


\end{document}

And here is the output with the \renewcommand

And here is the output without the \renewcommand

I am using pdfLaTex and the memoir class.

Answer 1

Well you don't have definitions for the shape "ssc" so LaTeX falls back to standard cmr: The \textsc in the title and in the document doesn't do anything.

So you probably should drop the \renewcommand\scdefault and use simply \MakeUppercase instead of \uppercaps in \makechapterstyle.