design problem: fonts and spacing

[Charles Hartman]

I'm reviving an old Hypercard tutorial on English Metrics -- how to  
scan metrical verse in English. It contains lots of scansions, which  
have this general form:

     x      /   |  /       /   |  x  (/) |  x    / |  x (/)
     A sight so touching in its majesty

As you can see, the spacing of the two lines _in relation to each  
other_ is critical.

I'm finding that when I close and reopen my stack, the spacing of the  
upper (scansion) line is sometimes off -- too condensed or too spaced  
out. I set the Font for the whole stack file to Palatino. I'm also  
not sure if that's a good idea, because I haven't yet been able to  
ttest whether it will work on Windows. I'm developing on OS X.

One solution is to put all the scansion-line-pairs into Courier --  
monospaced, universally available, and really ugly. Another is to do  
all the scansions as graphic images, but there are hundreds of them.

Is there a better solution?

Charles Hartman
Professor of English, Poet in Residence
Connecticut College
charles.hartman at conncoll.edu
*the Scandroid* is at cherry.conncoll.edu/cohar/Programs