underline omitting the descenders

Question

I'm very well aware that it is considered best practice not to use underlining other than on typewriters and in handwriting. But sometimes it is needed nonetheless.

In my opinion the typographically least offending way to underline in print is to leave out the descenders. This is also how I learned to do it in handwriting. Very few fonts offer a pre-made underlined variant, but some text-processors (e.g. OS X text-engine) do -- depending on the font used -- an acceptable job at emulating this effect:

How would I tweak any of the existing ways/packages for underlining to do the same?

As a bonus, I'd like to be able to tweak the behaviour (extent of the omitted part, apply to which letters) per font and text style, preferably working with XeLaTeX.

Answer 1

We could do for each letter:

• Produce the underlining
• Overwrite the line with the same but bolder letter or with a left and right shifted one, but in background or white color
• Write the letter

So we would get an underline with matching gaps.

Here I modified the soul approach of Marco in this way, just for a demonstration what I mean, which could be improved (boldness, loop):

\setcounter{errorcontextlines}{999}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{color}
\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\whiten}[1]{\llap{\textcolor{white}{{\the\SOUL@token}}\hspace{#1pt}}}
\DeclareRobustCommand*\myul{%
    \def\SOUL@everyspace{\underline{\space}\kern\z@}%
    \def\SOUL@everytoken{%
     \setbox0=\hbox{\the\SOUL@token}%
     \ifdim\dp0>\z@
        \raisebox{\dp0}{\underline{\phantom{\the\SOUL@token}}}%
        \whiten{1}\whiten{0}%
        \whiten{-1}\whiten{-2}%
        \llap{\the\SOUL@token}%
     \else
        \underline{\the\SOUL@token}%
     \fi}%
\SOUL@}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\sffamily\Huge
\myul{jumping quickly}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Here is a solution using contour and ulem packages.

IMO this produces a very good looking underline, specialy for title underlining:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[outline]{contour}

\usepackage{ulem}
\normalem % use classical emph

\newcommand \myul[4]{%
  \begingroup%
  \renewcommand \ULdepth {#1}%
  \renewcommand \ULthickness {#2}%
  \contourlength{#3}%
  \uline{\phantom{#4}}\llap{\contour{white}{#4}}%
  \endgroup%
}

\newcommand \myulline[4]{%
  \begingroup%
  \renewcommand \ULdepth {#1}%
  \renewcommand \ULthickness {#2}%
  \contourlength{#3}%
  \noindent\rlap{\uline{\hspace{\textwidth}}}\contour{white}{#4}%
  \endgroup%
}

\begin{document}
\bfseries

\Huge
\myulline{5pt}{1pt}{2pt}{Chapter Eight}

\vspace{1cm}

\normalsize
\normalfont

Test. \myul{2pt}{0.5pt}{1pt}{Quit jumping quickly!} Test.

Test. \myul{1.2pt}{0.5pt}{0.5pt}{Quit jumping quickly!} Test.

\end{document}

Output:

Close up:

As drawback, the underline depth cannot be very close to baseline because it can be hidden by the contour.

Answer 3

Simply because I found it useful here is a modification of Stefans answer above that lets you control the depth, thickness and width of the underline. This might be useful, for example, with a larger or bolder font. The syntax is: \varul<width>[depth][thickness]{stuff} where:

• <width> is optional and given as a multiple of 1/100 em, e.g. <10> would give a gap width of 0.1em. The default value is 5
• [depth] is optional and is given as a positive value (including units) that specifies the distance below the baseline to draw the underline. The default value is 0.2ex.
• [thickness] is optional and is given as a positive value (including units) specifying the thickness of the underline. The default value is 0.1ex
• The fourth, mandatory, argument is what you want underlined.

This will work across paragraphs and linebreaks but may change the spacing very slightly.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{xparse}
\makeatletter

\ExplSyntaxOn
\cs_new:Npn \white_text:n #1
  {
    \fp_set:Nn \l_tmpa_fp {#1 * .01}
    \llap{\textcolor{white}{\the\SOUL@syllable}\hspace{\fp_to_decimal:N \l_tmpa_fp em}}
    \llap{\textcolor{white}{\the\SOUL@syllable}\hspace{-\fp_to_decimal:N \l_tmpa_fp em}}
  }
\NewDocumentCommand{\whiten}{ m }
    {
      \int_step_function:nnnN {1}{1}{#1} \white_text:n
    }
\ExplSyntaxOff

\NewDocumentCommand{ \varul }{ D<>{5} O{0.2ex} O{0.1ex} +m } {%
\begingroup
\setul{#2}{#3}%
\def\SOUL@uleverysyllable{%
   \setbox0=\hbox{\the\SOUL@syllable}%
   \ifdim\dp0>\z@
      \SOUL@ulunderline{\phantom{\the\SOUL@syllable}}%
      \whiten{#1}%
      \llap{%
        \the\SOUL@syllable
        \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@charkern
      }%
   \else
       \SOUL@ulunderline{%
         \the\SOUL@syllable
         \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@charkern
       }%
   \fi}%
    \ul{#4}%
\endgroup
}

\makeatother
\begin{document}

\varul{\Huge jumping quickly}\par\smallskip
\varul[1pt][1pt]{\Huge jumping quickly}

\end{document}

Edit by Tobi: \fp_mul:Nn doesn’t work in a current TeXlive, so I replaced the two lines with just \fp_set:Nn \l_tmpa_fp {#1 * .01}.

Answer 4

here a solution which works also with pdflatex and using the advantages of the package soul:

\setcounter{errorcontextlines}{999}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{soul}
\makeatletter
\DeclareRobustCommand*\myul{%
    \def\SOUL@everyspace{\underline{\space}\kern\z@}
    \def\SOUL@everytoken{%
     \setbox0=\hbox{\the\SOUL@token}%
     \ifdim\dp0>\z@
        \the\SOUL@token
     \else
        \underline{\the\SOUL@token}%
     \fi}
\SOUL@}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\myul{jumping quickly}

\myul{asdsad sadsads adsad}
\end{document}

Answer 5

I'm using the following adaption of CDSousa's answer, for two reasons: firstly, XCharter + contour for some reason looks more coarse than the other text; secondly, to allow for close underlining (the drawback pointed out by CDSousa):

\usepackage{ulem}
\normalem % use classical emph
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{pgffor}
\newcommand\myul[4]{% arg 1: underline depth; arg 2: underline thickness; arg 3: space around descenders in pt (!)
  \begingroup%
  \renewcommand\ULdepth{#1}%
  \renewcommand\ULthickness{#2}%
  \uline{\phantom{\smash{#4}}}%
  \foreach \hshift in {0.0, 0.1, ..., #3}{%
    \foreach \upshift in {-0.4, -0.3, ..., 1.0}{%
      \llap{\color{white}\raisebox{\upshift0pt}[0pt]{#4}\hspace{\hshift0pt}}%
      \llap{\color{white}\raisebox{\upshift0pt}[0pt]{#4}\hspace{-\hshift0pt}}%
    }%
  }%
  \llap{#4}%
  \endgroup%

Example: \myul{1.75pt}{.5pt}{2}{Blupp of (that's \emph{of}, not \emph{off}, of course) a great Synopsis} has underline depth 1.75pt, underline thickness .5pt, and spacing 2pt, and looks like