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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop
Subject: Re: Typography--Was Re: ventura
Message-ID: <4062@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 5 Jun 89 00:43:10 GMT
References: <2706@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 53

From article <2706@portia.Stanford.EDU>, by mouser@portia.Stanford.EDU (Michael Wang):
" ...
"    Now it is great the TeX does all this stuff for you, but unless you
"    fully understand what TeX is doing, you probably won't be able to
"    apply these concepts outside of the TeX environment.

True.  So?  We were talking about whether technical folks can do a
decent job formatting their documents, weren't we?  Not whether they
know everything and can do everything that a professional designer
knows and can do.

"    For example, do
"    you know how to properly space large words in all caps? This is
"    actually a very difficult thing to do properly. Do you know what widows
"    and orphans are?

I don't know about spacing words in caps.  Tell me.  I do know about
widows and orphans.  Look, I wasn't saying you don't have to know
anything.  But reading a book or two will tell you about widows,
orphans, avoiding long lines, rivers, and stuff like that.  There's
just not that much to it.

" 3) Copying somebody else's formatting and ideas is a good way to learn
"    about general design principles. But, unless you understand why the
"    original designer made all those design decisions, you will never be
"    anything more than an imitator, unable to solve design problems
"    creatively and originally.

True.  So?  See above.  A technical document ought not to have an
original design.  It ought to be readable.  That means it ought to
look like other documents with similar subjects that readers have
seen.  Imitation is enough.

"    ... Now I
"    know you wouldn't think so, but making the implicit generalization that
"    everybody knows what a "nice" document should look like is, I feel is
"    incorrect.

I did not make such a generalization implicitly.  Producing a nice
document requires taste and the willingness to devote care and attention
to the task.  Not everyone can do it.  But some amateurs can do it,
I'm maintaining, for the special case of technical documents in
their own fields.

" 5) Book design is only one small area in the field of typography and
"    graphic design. Just because book design seems simple to you doesn't
"    mean that other areas are simple too. In one simple example, creating
"    pages that contain multiple columns, I feel, is much more difficult than
"    creating single column pages.  ...

The book I did had two columns per page.  What's the big deal?

			Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu