Change Print Draft output of \nd...\nd* to small caps?

Question

(Paul Unger writes)

I found a topic in the PT Supporters e-mail list that held promise for how to do this. It involved adding a line like

'\nd' > '\bd'

to PrintDraftChanges.txt in the project folder. The problem is, I don’t know the ‘code’ for small caps. I tried \sc and \smallcaps but neither worked… The code \bd gave bold text, so I think I’m on the right track. Does anyone know what I need to put for small caps?

Answer 1

(anon451647 writes)

Here is what I am pretty sure is happening with Small Caps. This information is in addition to updating custom.sty as described above.

There are two ways to do small caps:

1. Just make the lower case letters into upper case letters and render them with a smaller font size. This works for any font but does not really display exactly the same thing as what a typesetter normally displays for small caps. This is what Paratext seems to do in its editing window.

2. Add special characters and features to a font to display small caps correctly. Print Draft uses these characters and features from the font. This creates a more pleasing output but only works with specific fonts. The bad part is that many common fonts (Arial, Verdana, Gentium Basic) do not have these characters/features and so Print Draft cannot use them to display small caps.

There is a new version of Gentium available from SIL called “Gentium Plus”. It does have the required features for small caps. You can find it be googling for “gentium plus download”. I recommend using this font if you want to do Paratext Print Draft with Small Caps.

Answer 2

(Ian Hewerdine writes)

You’re correct, small caps is a character level marker like \nd and follows the same format: \sc …\sc*

I experimented with this today and found that PrintDraftChanges.txt allows me to modify non-marker text and insert markers. It does not allow me to remove or modify existing markers.

This isn’t mentioned in the Help files, so if one of the developers can confirm this behaviour, I’ll update Help to reflect this. The relevant Help topic is called: “How do I apply consistent changes to the text when creating output with Print Draft?”

Regarding markers, you can find all valid markers in the USFM documentation, which can be downloaded at: http://paratext.org/about/usfm

Answer 3

(anon451647 writes)

In order to display \nd as small caps in both the main editing window and Print Draft do the following:

1. If you do not already have a file called custom.sty in the directory for this project create one using Notepad or a similar editor

2. Add the following 3 lines at the bottom of this file and restart ParaTExt:

\Marker nd

\Smallcaps

\Underline -

This says "Modify the \nd marker by adding the small caps style and removing the underline (which the default stylesheet supplies)

3. Add entries to your project text like \nd Lord\nd*