gmw1@CUNIXD.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Gabe M Wiener) (09/16/89)
I've been using Aldus Pagemaker for quite a while to lay out brochures, newsletters, etc. Over the years I've always realized that although the program allows very wide control over the various typographic elements, it doesn't seem to "know" anything about typography. For example, it doesn't seem to realize. . . ...that you generally want uniform leading between the lines of a given paragraph or section, even if you superscript one character to indicate a footnote or reference. PM always inserts extra leading when none is really needed. ...that it doesn't have to insert extra leading when you italicize or place something in caps. I am continually readjusting the leading manually. ...that there are certain typographic rules for kerning letters that have matched sizes. The automatic kerning in PM leaves something to be desired. The result of these small quirks is that many publications end up looking unprofessional and poorly produced. Is there any page layout program that is smart enough to follow basic rules of typography as a default? Thanks -- Gabe Wiener - Columbia Univ. "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings gmw1@cunxid.cc.columbia.edu to be seriously considered as a means of gmw1@cunixc (bitnet) communication. The device is inherently of 72355.1226@compuserve.com no value to us." WUI:650-117-9118 - Western Union internal memo, 1877
truesdel@ics.uci.edu (Scott Truesdell) (09/19/89)
Gabe, PageMaker is "Publishing for the Rest of Us" in a very literal way. The "Rest of Us", in this case, is all those who know nothing about typography. It tries to provide as much automation as possible because Mac users or PageMaker users are not necessarily typographers. For more typographic control, people seem to prefer Quark XPress. I don't remember if this finer control is more automatic than PageMaker's or not. I do know that, at least manually, XPress offers finer typographic controls. This touches on the big gap in low-end electronic publishing. WYSIWYG vs WYGIWYW or WYGIWYSH (What You Get Is What You Want or What You Get Is What You Should Have). LaTeX is a good example of this latter approach to publishing, where what amounts to an expert system places the elements of your publication into a harmonious whole. Unfortunately, the user interface to LaTeX is a throw-back to the 70's. In any professional TRADITIONAL publishing house, it is very rare to have the writers do the typesetting. At best, this results in much wasted time and energy. If you can find a copy of Leslie Lamport's "LaTeX User's Guide and Reference Manual", the first several chapters make a good read. In the first chapter, he describes LaTeX as the typographic designer and Donald Knuth's TeX as the typesetter. Lamport makes the distinction between logical design and visual design and why logical design--the LaTeX method--produces consistently better output than visual design-- the WYSIWYG method. I first became aware of TeX probably 10 years ago. Since I had no access to "good" printers and since it involved learning another programming language, I paid it not much more than passing interest. When the Mac came along, and the LaserWriter, suddenly typographic issues seemed to be more immediate. One of the first things I noticed was all these "Power To Be Your Worst" documents people were PROUDLY foisting on anyone who would read them. I know this response has strayed quite far from your original query and I have managed to turn it into a personal flame, but what the Mac needs is a program as powerful and intelligent as LaTeX, with the ease of use of a Mac WYSIWYG word processor. A DESIGNER knows when something should be in bold face or italic. A writer only knows that it's the title of a publication or a subheading for a chapter. I look forward to the day when my favorite expert system typesetting program will have plug-in modules for various "designer looks". To the person or company who has the vision to develop such a system and the saavy to market it correctly, it could bust open a whole new market into the next generation of word processing. A catch-phrase? How about "Desktop Expert Design"? Or just "E.D." for short. --scott -- Scott Truesdell
c8s-an@franny.Berkeley.EDU (Alex Lau) (09/20/89)
I somewhat agree. Having a slight background in page layout, I have
seen some hideous pages produced by desktop publishing over the last
couple of years. Case in point: if you've read Guy Kawasaki's _The_
_Macintosh_Way_, you know what his resignation letter from Apple
looks like. El-puke-o.
I don't know if the "LaTeX" method is better, though. I like to have
control. What would be better is if layout programs could have some
AI "desktop design police" built in to say, "this design stinks" or
something of that nature and to suggest changes. But having a design
flowed automatically is not a good idea, IMHO.
I'll read up on Lamport's book. Maybe that can convince me otherwise.
--- Alex
UUCP: {att,backbones}!ucbvax!franny!c8s-an
INTERNET: c8s-an%franny.berkeley.edu@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
FIDONET: Alex.Lau@bmug.fidonet.org (1:161/444)chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (09/20/89)
>I somewhat agree. Having a slight background in page layout, I have >seen some hideous pages produced by desktop publishing over the last >couple of years. Case in point: if you've read Guy Kawasaki's _The_ >_Macintosh_Way_, you know what his resignation letter from Apple >looks like. El-puke-o. Guy's letter was *supposed* to look like el-puke-o. It's called an editorial statement. It was hilarious in context, too. I've seen some really gorgeous stuff come out of Pagemaker, too. Don't blame the tool because the user has a lack of knowledge, experience or any sense of design or good taste. -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> Editor,OtherRealms <+> Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com <+> CI$: 73317,635 <+> [This is myself speaking. I am not Appl Segmentation Fault. Core dumped.
truesdel@ics.uci.edu (Scott Truesdell) (09/20/89)
c8s-an@franny.Berkeley.EDU (Alex Lau) writes: >I don't know if the "LaTeX" method is better, though. I like to have >control. Since LaTeX is a layer on top of TeX, the user, at any time, may issue straight TeX commands to take over control from the overall LaTeX design. >What would be better is if layout programs could have some >AI "desktop design police" built in to say, "this design stinks" or >something of that nature and to suggest changes. But having a design >flowed automatically is not a good idea, IMHO. Yes and no. Lamport is very vocal about how his designs are derived. LaTeX has several predefined styles such as formats required for various technical journal submissions. Various style components are assigned various levels of "penalties". For example, leaving a widowed line on a page has a very high penalty assessment, so the processor will slightly reduce the leading, which, to a degree, has a lower penalty, in order to keep the line on the proper page. And so on. At any time, you, as the formatter, may override any of LaTeX's defaults. I am not a real LaTeX evangelist, especially because the user interface is so ancient. But I recognize the wisdom of this, if I may, "Expert Systems" approach to typesetting. I feel that it offers some insight towards future Mac WP/DTP directions. --scott -- Scott Truesdell
briand@tekig4.LEN.TEK.COM (Brian Diehm) (09/21/89)
>I somewhat agree. Having a slight background in page layout, I have >seen some hideous pages produced by desktop publishing over the last >couple of years. Case in point: if you've read Guy Kawasaki's _The_ >_Macintosh_Way_, you know what his resignation letter from Apple >looks like. El-puke-o. Hey, wait a minute here. Guy's resignation was done in MacDraw, it even says so right on it. It wasn't done on a page layout system, nor was it designed by a graphic artist. And it was done before page layout became common. Just the concept of doing that on the computer was cutting-edge stuff back then. But so what? This misses the whole point. That was the CLASSIEST resig- nation I've ever heard of. Not only did it look different, it had a lot of soul in it. And for sheer chutzpah, what more could he have done? He even had it framed and air delivered to Jean-Louis in FRANCE! As Guy would say: "Right thing, right way." Picking at the details of layout is not valid here, and sounds pretty narrow-minded to me. If the medium is the message (and certainly the nuances of typography and graphic design lend support to that concept) then this was very well done overall. Or would you like it better had Guy just typed "I resign" on Apple letterhead - in excruciatingly correct typography? (If you think that, you need to go back to the book and look up the term "The Macintosh Way.") I'll agree with your overall comment, that some hideous things are done by amateurs who have been given tools but no training, but Guy Kawasaki's famous resignation letter is definitely NOT an example! -- -Brian Diehm Tektronix, Inc. (503) 627-3437 briand@tekig4.LEN.TEK.COM P.O. Box 500, M/S 39-383 Beaverton, OR 97077 (SDA - Standard Disclaimers Apply)
lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) (09/23/89)
In article <1989Sep19.044538.10360@paris.ics.uci.edu> truesdel@ics.uci.edu (Scott Truesdell) writes: > I have managed to turn it into a personal flame, but what the Mac needs > is a program as powerful and intelligent as LaTeX, with the ease of use > of a Mac WYSIWYG word processor. A DESIGNER knows when something should > be in bold face or italic. A writer only knows that it's the title of a > publication or a subheading for a chapter. Definitely true. You might check out products from SoftQuad. They produce publishing systems based on SGML, which is a standard document markup language. You you mark up a document by specifying the headings, quotations, lists, etc. The SGML processor uses a database of tag definitions to produce the final document. (All this runs on UNIX machines.) SoftQuad also wrote a Mac program called Author/Editor which provides a convenient way for authors to markup a document. You can graphically see the tags, for example. It also enforces some of the rules (eg, a paragraph object must be contained in a chapter object). The program doesn't try to be WYSIWYG, since SGML is too complicated for that. Instead it serves as a nice authoring station. The intelligent formatting is left to someone who specializes in that. I think the October issue of MacWorld has a very short article on SGML (in the section that reports little news items). Larry Rosenstein, Apple Computer, Inc. Object Specialist Internet: lsr@Apple.com UUCP: {nsc, sun}!apple!lsr AppleLink: Rosenstein1