Seamus,
I thought this was an interesting (and surprisingly challenging) question, and I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I went ahead and created a few macros for various options, just to see what various possibilities might look like.
Independent of whatever solution is used, one thing I would recommend is to insert a very tiny amount of horizontal space after the \TeX
, just to ensure that the X doesn't run into the S visually. A hair-space is too wide, but \hspace{.03em}
seems to do the trick.
Here is what I came up with. First a picture:

My favorite for regular use is (1), and for small-caps use my favorite is (2a)—although (3b) doesn't look too bad to me as long as there is a slight amount of space between the X and the S.
And now the LaTeX code. I started with Hendrik's kerning of \TeX
in small caps, wrapped it into a \scTeX
control sequence, and built up options from there:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\begin{document}
\setlength{\parindent}{0in}
% \TeX in small caps
\newcommand\scTeX{%
\textsc{t\kern -.12em\lower.4ex\hbox{e}\kern-.1em x}%
}
% 1. TeXShop natural with \TeX with regular "Shop"
\newcommand\TeXShop{%
\hbox{\TeX\hspace{.03em}Shop}%
}
% 2a. TeXShop with uppercase \TeX with small caps "Shop"
\newcommand\TeXscShop{%
\hbox{\TeX\hspace{.03em}\textsc{Shop}}%
}
% 2b. TeXShop with uppercase \TeX with small caps "shop"
\newcommand\TeXscshop{%
\hbox{\TeX\hspace{.03em}\textsc{shop}}%
}
% 3a. TeXShop with small caps \TeX with small caps "Shop"
\newcommand\scTeXscShop{%
\hbox{\scTeX\hspace{.03em}\textsc{Shop}}%
}
% 3b. TeXShop with small caps \TeX with small caps "shop"
\newcommand\scTeXscshop{%
\hbox{\scTeX\hspace{.03em}\textsc{shop}}%
}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
\toprule
%\multicolumn{2}{c}{Item} \\
%\cmidrule(r){1-2}
%& Appearance & Description \\
%\midrule
(0) & TeXShop & unadorned\\[2pt]
(1) & \TeXShop & natural\\[8pt]
(2a) & \TeXscShop & regular ``\TeX'' with small caps ``Shop''\\[2pt]
(2b) & \TeXscshop & regular ``\TeX'' with small caps ``shop''\\[8pt]
(3a) & \scTeXscShop & small caps ``\TeX'' with small caps ``Shop''\\[2pt]
(3b) & \scTeXscshop & small caps ``\TeX'' with small caps ``shop''\\[2pt]
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
Note: this code only works for regular 10pt roman text. It fails quite poorly for italics, slant, and boldface.
What did you end up doing for a small-caps version of \LaTeX
?
\TeX
macro contains only uppercase letters. There is no difference, as typesetting\TeX\textsc{shop}
versus\scTeX\textsc{shop}
with\newcommand\scTeX{\textsc{T}\kern -.1667em\lower .5ex\hbox {\textsc{E}}\kern -.125em\textsc{X}}
suggests. – Pieter Nov 22 '10 at 17:19\textsc{TeXshop}
is acceptable? I'm not alone in preferring 'TeX' to '\TeX' in running text, I think! – Joseph Wright♦ Nov 22 '10 at 17:43