turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) (05/21/91)
----- I notice that my papers, produced with Word 4.0 and printed on a good laserwriter, do not look as good as papers produced with LaTex on Unix boxes. Looking closer, what I discovered is that the individual characters are fine, but that their spacing (under Microsoft Word 4.0) leaves much to be desired. Adjacent characters often touch, reducing the legibility of expressions, especially when subscripts or superscripts are involved. In this regard, LaTex does a much better job. (I mostly use the fonts Times and Symbol; the individual characters look fine.) Does anyone have a good solution to this? Are there better fonts that cure the problem? Microsoft Word says that one can adjust inter-character spacing, but in fact, one can only insert a full point of white space, which is far too much and screws up the proportionality of the spacing. (One can set inter-character spacing to .25, but it is rounded down to zero!) Any advice -- posted or e-mailed -- will be appreciated. Russell
lrm3@ellis.uchicago.edu (Lawrence Reed Miller) (05/21/91)
In article <20081@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes: >I notice that my papers, produced with Word 4.0 and printed on a >good laserwriter, do not look as good as papers produced with LaTex >on Unix boxes. Looking closer, what I discovered is that the >individual characters are fine, but that their spacing (under >Microsoft Word 4.0) leaves much to be desired. Adjacent characters [etc...] Try turning on Fractional Widths in the Page Setup dialog. This will improve the character spacing on the LaserWriter. This is one of those weird MS Word features that you never find until you read the manual 5 times :^) If you don't like the Times font, you might want to try another font. This is largely a matter of personal preference, but New Century Schoolbook and Bookman, which are both included on the LaserWriter II, are nice in my opinion. If you don't have a LaserWriter II, there are lots of PostScript (& TrueType) fonts available from companies like Adobe, Agfa & others, including NCS and Bookman. Look around and you are bound to find one you like. You definitely want Fractional Widths ON, though. Lawrence Miller
jfr@locus.com (Jon Rosen) (05/21/91)
In article <20081@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes: >----- >I notice that my papers, produced with Word 4.0 and printed on a >good laserwriter, do not look as good as papers produced with LaTex >on Unix boxes. Looking closer, what I discovered is that the >individual characters are fine, but that their spacing (under >Microsoft Word 4.0) leaves much to be desired. Adjacent characters ><stuff deleted> >Does anyone have a good solution to this? Are there better fonts Try Framemaker on the Mac. It is significantly better at handling intercharacter/interword spacing and kerning. It handles up to .1 point in sizing fonts and this capability works well with most fonts on 300dpi Postscript printers. Frame also is better at tables of contents, indexes and a lot of other very important capabilities. It also has builtin graphics editor which is very handy and it has things like anchored frames which allow illustrations and annotations to be connected to text either in or outside of the body flow and to move along with the text as you add more text. It contains MUCH of what is in Pagemaker, although its runarounds are pretty poor (much like the original Pagemaker 1.0 had..) All in all, I think Pagemaker is the ultimate all-in-one desktop publishing product out today. It is easy enough to use for letters, sophisticated enough to use for large documents, fanyc enought for newsletters and some advertising layout. Its printing in Postscript is excellent. Jon (I have NO relationship to Frame, just a satisfied user)
gjb@cs.brown.edu (Gregory Brail) (05/21/91)
In article <1991May20.223955.22343@midway.uchicago.edu> lrm3@ellis.uchicago.edu (Lawrence Reed Miller) writes: >In article <20081@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes: >>I notice that my papers, produced with Word 4.0 and printed on a >>good laserwriter, do not look as good as papers produced with LaTex >>on Unix boxes. Looking closer, what I discovered is that the >>individual characters are fine, but that their spacing (under >>Microsoft Word 4.0) leaves much to be desired. Adjacent characters >[etc...] > >Try turning on Fractional Widths in the Page Setup dialog. This will improve >the character spacing on the LaserWriter. This is one of those weird MS Word >features that you never find until you read the manual 5 times :^) True, but that's only part of it. TeX does lots of nice typographical things like pair kerning (adjusting the space between characters depending on what characters they are -- like making "Te" closer together than "NM", for instance). It also has better hyphenation, takes better care of letterspacing (adjusting the space between all the letters on the line in fully-justified text) and just pays more attention to how each individual paragraph looks rather than just trying to squeeze the appropriate amount of text on each line like Word does. Both PageMaker and Quark XPress do a much better job with typography than Word. PageMaker (the one I'm more familiar with) gives you control over pair kerning, letterspacing, track kerning, and generally produces very professional looking type -- especially if you use Adobe fonts that come with extra kern pairs and PageMaker has tracking information available for that font. So in short, if you want your type to look better, pour it into PageMaker. -greg +----------------------------------------------------+ Greg Brail Internet: gjb@cs.brown.edu BITNET: gjb@browncs.bitnet UUCP: ..uunet!brunix!gjb Home: (401)273-1172
hillman@uservx.afwl.af.mil (05/21/91)
In article <1991May20.223955.22343@midway.uchicago.edu>, lrm3@ellis.uchicago.edu (Lawrence Reed Miller) writes: > In article <20081@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes: >>I notice that my papers, produced with Word 4.0 and printed on a >>good laserwriter, do not look as good as papers produced with LaTex >>on Unix boxes. Looking closer, what I discovered is that the >>individual characters are fine, but that their spacing (under >>Microsoft Word 4.0) leaves much to be desired. Adjacent characters > [etc...] > > Try turning on Fractional Widths in the Page Setup dialog. This will improve > the character spacing on the LaserWriter. This is one of those weird MS Word > features that you never find until you read the manual 5 times :^) If you > don't like the Times font, you might want to try another font. This is largely > a matter of personal preference, but New Century Schoolbook and Bookman, which > are both included on the LaserWriter II, are nice in my opinion. If you don't > have a LaserWriter II, there are lots of PostScript (& TrueType) fonts > available from companies like Adobe, Agfa & others, including NCS and Bookman. > Look around and you are bound to find one you like. > > You definitely want Fractional Widths ON, though. > > Lawrence Miller Other choices include getting TeX for the Mac. Using WriteNow I notice that justified text is not 100% right aligned unless Fractional Widths is turned off! Does this also effect Word 4.0. The problem here is that Fract Widths is on or off for the whole print job not just parapgraphs you want justified.
kaufman@neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) (05/22/91)
In article <20081@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes: >----- >I notice that my papers, produced with Word 4.0 and printed on a >good laserwriter, do not look as good as papers produced with LaTex >on Unix boxes. Looking closer, what I discovered is that the >individual characters are fine, but that their spacing (under >Microsoft Word 4.0) leaves much to be desired. Adjacent characters >often touch, reducing the legibility of expressions, especially >when subscripts or superscripts are involved. In this regard, >LaTex does a much better job. (I mostly use the fonts Times and >Symbol; the individual characters look fine.) >Does anyone have a good solution to this? Are there better fonts >that cure the problem? The problem lies in the LaserWriter driver, which does not "really" know how wide characters are (the font metrics for the LW fonts are not really the same as the bitmap metrics). Blame also the Apple FONT/NFNT system which does not keep enough metric information (such as side-bearings), even for the cases where the character widths are basically correct. I think that TrueType sfnts will straighten this all out, eventually. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)
davidd@ttidca.TTI.COM (David Dantowitz) (05/23/91)
Word 4.0 permits you to adjust the leading and the interparagraph spacing (to name a few things). You'd be amazed at the difference adjusting these parameters can make. (The defaults DO look miserable in comparison.) For lots of helpful hints check out "The MAC is not a Typewriter," by Robin Williams. I just picked the book up a few days ago and it's changed my document preparation substantially. David -- David Dantowitz Singing Barbershop when not computing
rolfl@hedda.uio.no (Rolf Lindgren) (05/23/91)
For lots of helpful hints check out "The MAC is not a Typewriter," by Robin Williams. I just picked the book up a few days ago and it's changed my document preparation substantially. I've been considering translating (localizing) this book to Norwegian. Can anybody out there give any hints as to how to write for permission, what needs to be included in the query, etc. The need for localization of this book is threefold: Norwegian Macs are different, Norwegian typographical traditions are different, and the book is very, very good. There is one additional reason why Mac output doesn't look as good as LaTeX: When figuring line breaks, TeX takes the entire paragraph into account, while word processors (usually, traditionlly, etc.) only consider the previous line. So a LaTeX paragraph will almost always be better adjusted. The algorithm that does this is quite simple, and could well, I suppose, be implemented in a word processor. Rolf Lindgren | "The opinions expressed above are 616 Bjerke Studentheim | not necessarily those of anyone" N-0589 OSLO 5 | rolfl@hedda.uio.no
freek@fwi.uva.nl (Freek Wiedijk) (05/24/91)
rolfl@hedda.uio.no (Rolf Lindgren) writes: >There is one additional reason why Mac output doesn't look as good as LaTeX: >When figuring line breaks, TeX takes the entire paragraph into account, while >word processors (usually, traditionlly, etc.) only consider the previous line. >So a LaTeX paragraph will almost always be better adjusted. The algorithm that >does this is quite simple, and could well, I suppose, be implemented in a word >processor. Do PageMaker and/or QuarkXPress offer this algorithm? Freek "the Pistol Major" Wiedijk E-mail: freek@fwi.uva.nl #P:+/ = #+/P?*+/ = i<<*+/P?*+/ = +/i<<**P?*+/ = +/(i<<*P?)*+/ = +/+/(i<<*P?)**
ashwin@gatech.edu (Ashwin Ram) (05/24/91)
In article <ROLFL.91May23144946@hedda.uio.no> rolfl@hedda.uio.no (Rolf Lindgren) writes: > There is one additional reason why Mac output doesn't look as good as LaTeX: > When figuring line breaks, TeX takes the entire paragraph into account, while > word processors (usually, traditionlly, etc.) only consider the previous line. > So a LaTeX paragraph will almost always be better adjusted. The algorithm that > does this is quite simple, and could well, I suppose, be implemented in a word > processor. Actually, it is more complex than this. Unlike Word, TeX is a typesetter, not a word processor. It has heuristics and penalties associated with various things like word spacing (too much or too little), line spacing, hyphenation (where to hyphenate and where not to hyphenate words), paragraph spacing, moving a figure too far from where it's referenced in the text, spacing after punctuation, ligatures (e.g., when "fi" are printed together, they are run together into one character), kerning (e.g., when you typeset "Yale", you move the "a" left slightly to make it print under the "Y", otherwise the space between the "Y" and the "a" looks like it's too much), math mode (e.g., in-line equations are typeset differently from equations that stand alone by themselves), widows and orphans (not putting section names by themselves at the bottom of a page), etc. etc. etc. None of these things by themselves sound like a big deal, but together they make a tremendous difference in the appearance of the printed page. TeX performs a complex optimization on the entire page to give you the best possible output within its heuristics. This is why it's output looks almost as good as you can get with professional typesetting. (But not quite; no-one has as yet been able to fully mathematicize typesetting aesthetics.) This is also why it's difficult to do this on a WYSIWYG word processor (theoretically, a small change on one page could cause a complete recomputation of all following pages). However, some subset of this optimization could (and should) be performed in real time by WYSIWYG word processors. (E.g., it would be fairly easy to optimize one paragraph at a time.) I'd be interested in hearing about programs that do this. -- Ashwin.
man@cs.brown.edu (Mark H. Nodine) (05/24/91)
In article <1445@mephisto.edu>, ashwin@gatech.edu (Ashwin Ram) writes: |> However, some subset of this optimization could (and should) be performed in |> real time by WYSIWYG word processors. (E.g., it would be fairly easy to |> optimize one paragraph at a time.) I'd be interested in hearing about |> programs that do this. I was actually thinking about what this would be like in a WYSIWYG editor, and I came to the conclusion that you wouldn't want to do the recomputations _very_ often, because it would be very disconcerting as a user to be say typing in the middle of the paragraph and have your cursor jumping all over the place because the whole paragraph (including the part above the cursor) is jiggling with every character you type. You'd have to apply the paragraph- wise heuristics after you leave the paragraph and settle for only line-at-a- time heuristics while you're editing. --Mark
philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) (05/25/91)
In article <76668@brunix.UUCP>, man@cs.brown.edu (Mark H. Nodine) writes: |> I was actually thinking about what this would be like in a WYSIWYG editor, |> and I came to the conclusion that you wouldn't want to do the recomputations |> _very_ often, because it would be very disconcerting as a user to be say |> typing in the middle of the paragraph and have your cursor jumping all over |> the place because the whole paragraph (including the part above the cursor) |> is jiggling with every character you type. You'd have to apply the paragraph- |> wise heuristics after you leave the paragraph and settle for only line-at-a- |> time heuristics while you're editing. I'm not so sure this is such a big problem. Latex (tex with a popular set of macros) takes about 1.5s per page on a DECstation 3100. A 68040 machine should be at least this fast - they should be affordable by the time the necessary programming is done (some are affordable right now - I won't mention names). Anyone keen to implement a real-time WYSIWYG TeX? (I would be if I had more spare time...) -- Philip Machanick philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
briand@tekig10.pen.tek.com (Brian D Diehm) (05/25/91)
>TeX performs a complex optimization on the entire page to give you the best >possible output within its heuristics. This is why it's output looks almost >as good as you can get with professional typesetting. (But not quite; no-one >has as yet been able to fully mathematicize typesetting aesthetics.) This is >also why it's difficult to do this on a WYSIWYG word processor >(theoretically, a small change on one page could cause a complete >recomputation of all following pages). Interleaf does this. It is my belief that a new Macintosh version of Interleaf will soon be out, one that is completely Mac-like. In fact, I have been told that it was one of the major test beds for System 7, because it was the first major application written specifically for System 7 (as opposed to migrated up from System 6.x.x). Anyway, a small change in one paragraph can cause vertical tracking changes on the page that roll things across page boundaries. Interleaf takes care of it all, WYSIWYG and real time. (My Interleaf experience comes from Sun platforms.) Of the things mentioned in the original posting that "typesetting" systems do, I believe Interleaf does them all except perhaps the special typesetting for equations in-line as opposed to in a block. DISCLAIMER: I'm not an Interleaf insider, so what I say is worth exactly what you paid for it. -- -Brian Diehm Tektronix, Inc. (503) 627-3437 briand@tekig10.PEN.TEK.COM P.O. Box 500, M/S 19-286 Beaverton, OR 97077
rolfl@hedda.uio.no (Rolf Lindgren) (05/27/91)
In article <1445@mephisto.edu> ashwin@gatech.edu (Ashwin Ram) writes: > In article <ROLFL.91May23144946@hedda.uio.no> rolfl@hedda.uio.no (Rolf Lindgren) writes: > > There is one additional reason why Mac output doesn't look as good as LaTeX: > > When figuring line breaks, TeX takes the entire paragraph into account, while > > word processors (usually, traditionlly, etc.) only consider the previous line. > > So a LaTeX paragraph will almost always be better adjusted. The algorithm that > > does this is quite simple, and could well, I suppose, be implemented in a word > > processor. > > TeX performs a complex optimization on the entire page to give you the best > possible output within its heuristics. This is why it's output looks almost > as good as you can get with professional typesetting. Interesting note. If TeX output looks 'almost' as good as you can get with professional typesetting, then anything lesser then TeX cannot do proffesional typesetting. Hence professional typesetting on a Mac is impossible. Unless, of course, you mean that TeX is almost as good as _any_ proffesional typesetter_. Which of these other proffesional typesertters is TeX second to? They use TeX proffesionally out there, you know, and I've seen professional typographer go gaga over what TeX can do (Actual quote: "I've been typesetting mathematics for 30 years now. I've never seen anything as good as this"). (But not quite; no-one > has as yet been able to fully mathematicize typesetting aesthetics.) This is > also why it's difficult to do this on a WYSIWYG word processor > (theoretically, a small change on one page could cause a complete > recomputation of all following pages). '! No me digas ! TeX does not nessecarily mathematicize typesetting aesthetics. TeX allows anything that lead types allowed you to, and more. You can even keep small changes on one page _from_ recomputation of all the following pages. The comparison with WYSIWYG word processors doesn't keep up because TeX offers you the ability to take any degree of control, something that word processors can't if you want to keep their operation user friendly. Word processors have the great disadvantage that they try to conform to the notion that `"it's more important that programs are easy to use, than that they do what they're supposed to do" > However, some subset of this optimization could (and should) be performed in > real time by WYSIWYG word processors. (E.g., it would be fairly easy to > optimize one paragraph at a time.) I'd be interested in hearing about > programs that do this. > > -- Ashwin. > -roffe