> This is to point at a shortcoming of NFSS2: (I don't know whether > this has already been discussed when designed NFSS) There are many potential axes that NFSS could have incorporated. I don't remember enough of the original papers to be sure off hand how the present set were arrived at. > There is such a thing as a slanted/italic small caps font > (see Sebastian Carter's "Typographers on Type" for an example: > it contains a page showing different fonts of the Zapf Renaissance (1986) > family, including such a font). So you reckon small caps is "just another axis"? Well, you're not alone... > So it doesn't seem appropriate to classify small caps as a shape, > rather, I think, it should be considered as a case. Thus resulting > in control sequences like > \textcaps{...} and {\capscase ...} > or the like, analogous to uppercase and lowercase. Except that uppercase and lowercase are TeX primitive mechanisms with truly eccentric properties, which can't be used in a modal fashion, as in your second example. > With the current fonts and current NFSS, it is e.g. not possible > to markup names with small caps ... [with] italics Quite so. However, adding an axis to NFSS to take account of *one* oblique SC font seems to me excessive. I don't believe that NFSS is perfect, but I don't think it's bad as it is. > Unfortunaly I can't think of any way to incorporate this easily > in NFSS and especially in its current interface. An N^{3}FSS (for LaTeX 3) could perhaps consider the possibility of variable numbers of axes for font families. To incorporate it in N^{2}FSS (the one in 2e) would imply changing pretty much all the code to add a fixed extra axis to every font. It would be worse than the font changes between 2.09 and 2e. Robin Fairbairns