Adding a contour

When text is printed over a background, it is much more with a contour present to overprint the background. This contour may be white. This way, there would be a nice clearance around the text.

Another utilization would be to improve the visibility of text with very light colors for better reading on a white background.

Let’s see how to achieve that.

How to do it...

Our example will use the color yellow for chapter headings in a book. This is hardly readable, so we will add a black contour to improve the readability:

1. We will use the scrbook class, which supports chapter headings, so start your document with the following:

   \documentclass{scrbook}

2. Load the contour package. Use the outline option to print a real outline; otherwise, copies of the original text will be used to create a contour. Specify the thickness of the contour as a length, as follows:

   \usepackage[outline]{contour}
   \contourlength{1.5pt}

3. Define a macro for the new chapter...