On 2014-05-29 19:29, Hans Hagen wrote:
On
5/29/2014 8:15 PM, Rik Kabel wrote:
I am setting some text from Geoffrey
Dowding's /Finer Points in the
Spacing and Arrangement of Type/. I am trying to set it using
his
recommendations. For those not familiar with his book, the key
point is
that he promotes extremely tight spacing to achieve a uniform
density
across the page in the belief that this leads to a pleasing
presentation
and improved readability.
Among his recommendations is that an opening single quote
together with
the space preceding it should take up no more space than a
normal word
space, and similarly following a closing single quote; that the
space
after some punctuation be minimized (some of his commas appear
to have
perhaps just a hairspace, following them); that the space
between
punctuation and letters be adjusted according to the shape of
the
letter; and that 'and' be replaced by '&' as necessary to
improve word
spacing. While this last is probably beyond the scope of
ConTeXt, I am
hoping that the first few might be managed through
\definecharacterspacing, \setupcharacterspacing, and
\setcharacterspacing.
Alas, I have found no documentation on this set of commands, and
what I
see in the source is opaque.
If you have pointers to the details of these commands, or other
suggestions for such typographic exercises, please let me know.
you can mess with sfcodes:
\starttext
\input tufte
\sfcode`\.100 \sfcode`\,100
\sfcode`\?100 \sfcode`\!100
\sfcode`\:100 \sfcode`\;100
\input tufte
\dostepwiserecurse{`a}{`z}{1}{\sfcode#1=100\relax}
\input tufte
\dostepwiserecurse{"0}{"FFFF}{1}{\sfcode#1=100\relax}
\input tufte
\stoptext
I'm pretty sure I would not read books typeset that way.
replacing and by & can be done too but that would look even
worse (for consistency one should then replace 'or' by | and even
more can be saved by going sms: "wandering" becomes
"w&ndering", and "according" becomes "acc|rding" plus the
usual messing with digits
probably, omitting all vowels would work out too for reader who
like that compact typesetting
Hans
Hans,
I think you are a bit too quick to judge from my description (and
that is the fault of my description).
Below is a bit I scanned from page 51 of the 1966 3rd edition where
you can see the '&' substitution and general tightness:
I have put the full scan of pages 50 and 51 at http://www.panix.com/~rik/Dowding_50-51.pdf
so that you can see the overall effect more clearly. I also put up
pages 28 and 29 (http://www.panix.com/~rik/Dowding_28-29.pdf),
where he discusses fitting quotation marks and other punctuation
around particular shapes.
Dowding represents the fine, high-quality handset press aesthetic of
the early- and mid-20th century, but he was also concerned with
job-work and high-volume publishing. He comes from the same
tradition as Frederic Goudy, Eric Gill, Stanley Morison, D.B.
Updike, and Bruce Rogers. They celebrated the art of book typography
as much as the mechanics. Dowding was not quite the romantic that
the others (Gill in particular) were, and saw the transition to
automated typesetting as a challenge to the art largely because of
the change in economics (it is disruptive and relatively expensive
to rework a line of type once cast). I have no doubt that he would
have welcomed the renewed flexibility that DEK provided, and you
continue to provide, through newer tools than the crude early
automation that he faced. (And yes, I do understand some of the
economics of the printshop. I worked for a short time while in
college in a hot-type shop, a weekly newspaper, hand-setting display
type for a Ludlow caster and making up pages on the stone.)
My issue with Dowding (and with Gill) is that they suggest that the
compositor has an obligation to change the author's text, without
consultation and agreement, in order to meet his concept of better
page makeup. Dowding's sensitivity to the appearance of the page, on
the other hand, is sadly missing from much of book publishing today.
Gross manipulation of the space factors is probably too crude to
accomplish much in implementing the style Dowding promotes, although
the tightness in the second tufte from your example (modifying the
punctuation) may be a starting point.
With XeTeX, one can use \interchartoks to handle general
(non-font-specific) kerning between punctuation and certain letter
shapes (sloped left or right, ascender, descender, ...) beyond what
any particular font's kerning tables provide. I see nothing in MKIV
that provides this, and thought that perhaps \definecharacterspacing
might fill the role. Hence the original question in this thread.
--
Rik Kabel