Re: Size (SZ) command quirk?

[TBaehr@xxxxxxxx]

Re two values for SZ: For once it's a feature, not a bug. The two values are
for height and width of Speedo fonts. If you put in something like
SZ10pt,13pt you'll get nominally ten-point type that has the width of
13-point type. Great for displays, for making compressed type when none
exists, etc. It's great fun to experiment with. In my enhanced dialogs,
there's a dialog that helps you create "small caps". What it does is
calculate a size about 20% less than your base type (I think; I can't
remember the figure I used) and put that in for the size. But it also
fattens up the type a bit by increasing the second point size a little. This
makes the type look more like small caps than simply like smallified regular
type. In "real" typesetting, small caps are really a different font
altogether, and the letters are just a little fatter, proportionately, than
the base type. All this shouldn't affect justification or line length, by
the way. You can put these double values in either from the menus/dialogs or
on the command line. Just remember to put in the PT -- otherwise XyWrite may
think you want 13-inch type!

Why the second pair of values is in inches when changing selected text:
 That's because the default horizontal measure is in inches, and the XyWrite
engine is too dumb to give you the measure in points. If you use the menus,
you should get points at both ends of selected text because I put that into
the menus as a work-around for the Xy engine. But as you noted, most of the
time, the change in unit of measure doesn't affect anything -- it just looks
funny.

Hope this clears up a mystery or two!

Tim Baehr
TBaehr@xxxxxxxx