[scribus] Fwd: Improve typographic rule support

[Louis Desjardins]

2011/10/26 Gregory Pittman <gregp_ky at yahoo.com>

> On 10/26/2011 10:13 AM, john Culleton wrote:
>
>>
>> Observations:
>> The TeX short line sample requires one less hyphen (5) than the Scribus
>> short line sample (6), and fitted two more words onto the page. The OO
>> short line sample required 7 hyphens. The Masterson InDesign short line
>> sample required 5 hyphens. The other InDesign sample required 7
>> hyphens. Some designers are better than others :<)
>>
>>
> My observations are that there is no inherently greater typographic beauty
> when comparing TeX with the true DTP programs, including Scribus.
>
> We see what we might expect from the wordprocessors, where an excess of
> hyphenation occurs. Whether this is due to weaker kerning or something else,
> I do not know.
>
> One can also see the trouble one gets into with narrow column full
> justification with all of the methods. Unless one wants to do a lot of
> manual tweaking or put up with ugliness, this combination should be avoided.
>

I agree.

Font, type size, width of justification, hyphenation rules, horizontal
scaling, kerning, tracking, word spacing, glyph extension, all these
variable are closely related to give the final result. In fact, in the PDF
we see at least one ugly line that breaks the smoothness of the "typographic
color" in all the methods. At some point, two parameters that can solve the
issue: type size and the text itself. So, no matter the method, at some
point only the eye can judge clearly what's good and what's not.

>
> In summary, I think the argument that the TeX method represents some
> magical or ideal way to do this is not supported by the evidence.
> Furthermore, any attempt to show a better or more pleasing result should be
> done without any labels, so that one could focus on the desired appearance
> rather than be swayed by the source.
>

Agree again. There is no magic. Just work and experience, a sharp eye used
to spot details and appreciate the result, tweak again... And in the end, it
might be also advisable to edit the text. So... really, no! No magic.

Keeping an eye on *all* parameters. Slightly moving them in seemless changes
can produce great results. Your readers will appreciate your work!

>
> At least in my view the superiority of paragraph-wide before line
> algorithms has not been demonstrated.
>
> Greg
>
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