h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Typesetting for Beginners - What's the Point? - A884117
Author: Bels. A distressing case of Premature Evaluation. - U188050

For review. Thank you.

Bels
2.12.02

Very nice! Well done! It is informative yet not confusing.

Tango

I agree, a very thorough and clearly explained entry! The one thing I might say is that I don't think the last paragraph about the use of the   in Guide ML is really necessary - and didn't really seem to fit with the flow of the entry either. 'tis a fairly mionr quibble though, and everyone else will probably like it

I agree in a way with the comment about the final paragraph. To me it reads strangely because you are suddenly very specific about a feature of one particular website, whereas your previous remarks have been appropriate to all word processors.

In fact, it is a feature of HTML, not just GuideML (which is a particular extension of HTML), and can be used in any website that contains tables, so you could just change it to HTML instead and preserve the generality.

Ah - isn't there something to say about the origins of 'mark-up'?

Cool entry though - it's definitely one of those 'impress your friends' articles.

Gubie

p.s. little title suggestion: What's the Point of Typesetting?

Great! I always wanted to know this. Just one thing: UK is in Europe.



HELL

Hi Bels,

great entry, very clear without becoming overly dry, .

I don't know enough about the subject to know whether you have covered all the bases, but it certainly looks thorough.

Nothing much more i can say. Look forward to seeing it on the FP.

btw Hell, surely you know it's only Europeans who think the UK is *in* Europe, .

cya
spiff

Wow, that's a great entry!

Two quibbles: There is an ellipsis symbol in GuideML (&hellip; or <ENTITY TYPE="#8230"/&gt which you could use instead of three periods.

The other is the last paragraph. It feels very odd after reading the rest of the entry. I think you could drop it without diminuishing the entry.

Good entry, Bels!

I'm not sure that I agree about the purpose of serifs on letters. I understood they are a left-over of the chisel marks on Roman Capitals, rather than being to draw the eye along.

As everyone else has said, an excellant piece.

Having learnt to type on an Imperial 600 and being trained in the use of an A B Dick offset lithographic printer I cannot fault the technical content.

Just one small quibble:

"Roman type is the technical term for normal, ordinary, upright type. This sentence is in roman type."

On my computer is is still in sans serif like the rest of the article. Maybe a problem with GuideML



Stuart

Great entry, Bels!

I wonder about the specific GuideML points, though: judging at the rate outsiders seem to wander in (brought by Google??) I think it might be worth keeping the points to general typesetting, rather thatn site-specific topics.

Azara

My Father-in-Law was a typesetter - it might be worth mentioning the advent of WP on an old and honourable trade - it killed it, but the rest looks really good.

There are a lot of words that have drifted into common parlance from printing, though obviously these drift out of my mind right now, might be worth looking at a few of those, for light relief so to speak, but the entry is fine without them.

First, the good news. I've deleted the final paragraph about &nbsp;. It is defunct, it is no more. It is, in fact, an ex-paragraph.

Now the bad news. I've added a new section, on symbols and their origins. I thought it might be interesting. If there's a consensus that it's not appropriate or useful, I'll probably delete it. Over to you.

Hell - it's now continental Europe. Thanks for that.

Gordon - the reason I didn't use the &hellip; is simply that I have got into the habit of using three points, as per the guidelines. The effect is pretty much identical anyway.

Gnomon - re serif - my dictionary has: origin mid 19th cent.: perhaps from Dutch 'schreef', - 'dash, line'. of Germanic origin

I don't recall seeing them on Roman inscriptions, but I could be wrong. Do you know what the Romans called them?

Stuart - roman type can be serif or sans serif, as can italic. Roman just means not italic. It doesn't tell you anything about which font it is.

McKay - Thanks for that. I've added a mention of the redundancy brought about by computerisation.

Bels

WOW! Brilliant.

What else do you have in your pocket, Bels?

I loved the new section explaning !?&§$... BUT... err... It left me wanting MORE: What about the " and : and % and $ and _ and @ and /? Note: The Entry is already perfect without that information. I am just *curious*, and thought you might know.

HELL

You tempt me, Hell, you tempt me. But look, I started out to write maybe 1000 words or so on basic typesetting. It's already over 3000. Maybe that section should be hived off to a separate entry.

Btw the origin of the $ sign is a bit obscure. Some people say it is from US, the U superimposed on the S. Others say it's from the figure 8, because Spanish pieces of eight were worth the same as dollars. Does anyone have any other theories? ('Dollar' comes from 'Thaler'.)

I thought ligatures meant things like the little loop that sometimes appears in "st" from the top end of the 's' to the cross of the 't', rather than the old latin dipthongs.

Yes, also ff, fi and other pairs - but I couldn't do that in GuideML. But fundamentally a ligature is a joining of two letters.

ok. also, is this entry more about typography than typesetting?

It's a fine distinction. I did originally have 'typography' but then changed it to 'typesetting'. I think that is the term used in WP programs. I am more concerned with the practicalities than with the design concepts. The work of setting up the type is (was) done by a typesetter, not a typographer. The computerised process is usually called computer typesetting rather than typography. I think typography also involves the printing process, which of course is a separate subject.

A very fine distinction. I can barely tell the difference. I think words like "leading" and "kerning" made me think typography, but only because i've seen them in the context of font design.

Well since leading is blank space between the lines I don't see how it relates to font design! You can have more or less leading whatever the font.