mjhjmtu

I want to cut off the very top left part of an uppercase R. I tried using adjustbox, but it cuts off the whole top part, which is not what I want. Here's the MWE, the corresponding output and the desired output.

MWE:

documentclassarticle
usepackageadjustbox
begindocument
adjustboxtrim = 0pt -.5pt 0pt .5pt, clipR
enddocument

Corresponding output:

Desired output:

You can do this with adjustbox, but because it can only clip rectangular areas you'll need to create two clippings and place them next to each other.

I'm using two adjustboxes below: the first just shows the leftmost 0.175em of the “R”, with the top 0.1em cut off, and the second one shows the remainder of the letter.
I've fboxed the letters to show that their bounding boxes are identical and I've converted the pdf to a png with transparency to demonstrate that I'm not covering anything up :).

documentclassarticle

usepackageadjustbox
newcommand*clippedR%
 adjustboxviewport = 0em -.95em .175em dimexprheight-.1em, clip,set depth=0ptR%
 adjustboxviewport = .175em -.05em width height, clip,set depth=0ptR%


begindocument

fboxR
fboxclippedR

enddocument

Note that height, width and depth can be used to refer to the original dimensions of the letter (see the adjustbox documentation) and that dimexpr can be used to perform computations with dimensions (see the etex documentation, §3.5 as of this writing). The % at the end of these lines are necessary because single newlines are normally interpreted as spaces (see this answer).

What works with make-up also works for tex: instead of removing the corner of the R, cover it up:

documentclassstandalone
usepackagexcolor

begindocument

 
 leavevmoderlapRrlapkern-0.02emtextcolorwhiteraisebox0.5emrule0.2em0.25em


text

enddocument

A possible solution is to simply draw over that corner using tikz:

documentclassarticle
usepackagetikz
% Lengths used to hold Height/Width of `R' in current font
newlengthuppercaseHeight
newlengthuppercaseWidth
% R with a corner missing
newcommandcutR%
% Save hieght and width of current R (depends on fontsize)
settoheightuppercaseHeightR%
settowidthuppercaseWidthR%
R% Print R
% Overlay a white rectangle
tikz[baseline,overlay] fill [white] % [red] % useful to use a red box when tweaking
(-uppercaseWidth, 0.8*uppercaseHeight) rectangle ++(0.24*uppercaseWidth, 0.25*uppercaseHeight);

begindocumentnoindent
small X cutR X \
normalsize X cutR X \
large X cutR X
enddocument

Output:

The values used in the fill command appear to work fairly well for the default font over a range of sizes, but you may want to adjust them to get things looking exactly as intended.

documentclassarticle
usepackagexcolor,stackengine
begindocument
stackinsetlt-.1ptcolorwhiterule1.8pt1ptR
enddocument