I am using \buildtextaccent to create a couple of characters that
have no Unicode equivalent. They are scribal abbreviations that made
it into early typesetters works. In this case, the abbreviation are
for Latin que, which looks like a q with a small ezh appended in a
subscript position, and q with an acute accent, both of which are
used in some 17th century works I am dealing with. An example of the
abbreviation with the ezh and accent can be seen at https://books.google.com/books?id=hHNVAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q&f=false
in the sixth line of the paragraph beginning “Yea but”.
It seems that \buildtextaccent\textacute q (or \buildtextaccent´q)
moves the q to the right within the character’s bounding box. The
following example (and attached resulting pdf) demonstrates this.
Lines 1 and 2 show the string with and without the \buildtextaccent,
and lines 4 and 6 repeat that in italic. The strings are the same
width, but the q is moved right. Lines 3 and 6 show a manual kerning
of the q to improve appearance.
This happens with many fonts, but not all (I do not see it with
Computer Modern). I am using Win 10Pro x64 with ConTeXt ver:
2015.09.04 11:00 MKIV beta fmt: 2015.9.5 int: english/english.
I suspect that this is not intended, but I am not sure.
I would also love to raise the accent a bit. Suggestions? I can live
with it as it is and manually kern as needed. There are very few
instances of these abbreviations that need to be dealt with.
% macros=mkvi engine=luajittex
\starttexdefinition boxWidth #STR
\setbox0=\hbox{#STR}\the\wd0
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition Dicitque
Dicitq\kern-0.070em\low{ʒ}\autoinsertnextspace
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition DicitqueK
Dicit\buildtextaccent\textacute
q\kern-0.070em\low{ʒ}\autoinsertnextspace
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition DicitqueKK
Dicit\kern-0.060em\buildtextaccent\textacute
q\kern-0.070em\low{ʒ}\autoinsertnextspace
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition idque
idq\autoinsertnextspace
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition idqueK
id\buildtextaccent\textacute q\autoinsertnextspace
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition idqueKK
id\kern-0.060em\buildtextaccent\textacute
q\autoinsertnextspace
\stoptexdefinition
\setupbodyfont[ebgaramond,12pt]
\starttext
\startitemize[n,joinedup,packed]
\item \Dicitque \qquad\boxWidth{\Dicitque}\par
\item \DicitqueK \qquad\boxWidth{\DicitqueK}\par
\item \DicitqueKK \qquad\boxWidth{\DicitqueKK}\par
\it
\item \Dicitque \qquad\boxWidth{\Dicitque}\par
\item \DicitqueK \qquad\boxWidth{\DicitqueK}\par
\item \DicitqueKK \qquad\boxWidth{\DicitqueKK}\par
\stopitemize
\startitemize[n,joinedup,packed]
\item \idque \qquad\boxWidth{\idque}\par
\item \idqueK \qquad\boxWidth{\idqueK}\par
\item \idqueKK \qquad\boxWidth{\idqueKK}\par
\it
\item \idque \qquad\boxWidth{\idque}\par
\item \idqueK \qquad\boxWidth{\idqueK}\par
\item \idqueKK \qquad\boxWidth{\idqueKK}\par
\stopitemize
\stoptext
--
Rik