Re: [DSSSL] TeX's streching space (or rubber length) ?

[Paul Prescod <papresco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

kubek wrote:
> Not exactly, from my poor English knowledge, I uderstand a leader is
> made from dots ('.' chars). What I want here is white space, (or an
> empty box).

In DSSSL a leader can be made up of any flow object:

(make leader (literal " "))

Note that RTF doesn't seem to support that properly).
 
> .. But you need this font to see (or print) the document, no ?
> As I understand your sentence, this is the same for TeX : Tex allows
> to express the length of a text (or a box) but is unable to output a
> dvi file if the fonts are not installed. *But* in TeX I'm able to take
> my file and go to another machine where the fonts are. I thought the
> same was possible with jade ? If not I miss something here and will
> have to dig more deeply in the DSSSL document :-(

You are correct that in Jade you can make a document on one machine and
print it out on another where the fonts are installed. It is just that a
function like 

(font-length font-family-name: "New Times Roman" "abc")

would seem to require access to the font to do its calculation. But on
second thought, it could return an object of type length-spec.
length-specs are resolved in the formatter itself. I just don't see any
function that does that. The font-info function documentation does not
mention length-specs at all.
 
 Paul Prescod

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