Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!hsi!stevens
From: stevens@hsi.UUCP (Richard Stevens)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: why are all books Times Roman ?
Keywords: typefaces, fonts
Message-ID: <485@hsi86.hsi.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jun 89 21:29:37 GMT
Organization: Health Systems Intl., New Haven, CT
Lines: 27

Why are almost all technical books done in Times Roman these days ?
Going through my bookshelf, other than Knuth's books,
almost everything seems to be in Times Roman, with 10 point
characters on 12 point spacing.  Somehow Tanenbaum was able
to get his second edition of networking in what looks like 11/13.
Even the Red and Blue Adobe PostScript books are Times Roman.
(You'd think that if anyone could do a book nicely in another
font it would be Adobe.)

I think the Times family on our LaserWriters look pretty bad.
Is this endemic to the LW, or should I expect the same font on
a high-resolution PostScript typesetter to look better ?

What's the reason for this addiction to Times Roman ?  Going through
the Adobe Font catalog, there appear to be more readable serif fonts
with the characters just a little wider.  (My main complaint about
Times is that it looks so squeezed.)  Do publishers like Times
because it uses a fewer number of pages ?  Is it just history ?
I note the Chicago Manual of Style says that few typefaces other
than Times Roman have all the necessary characters necessary for
technical typesetting, but a *lot* has happened in the area of
type fonts since 1982.

	Richard Stevens
	Health Systems International, New Haven, CT
	   stevens@hsi.com
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